Before he cleared the furniture heaped in front of the door, Bowie scrambled under and grabbed him by the top of his scalp. The man screamed and fumbled unsuccessfully to raise his weapon. Bowie dragged him into the hallway, shaking him viciously from side to side until his neck snapped.
A second man immediately scurried in through the hole, holding a pistol at the ready. Mason brought his rifle up and fired three quick shots, killing him instantly. He nodded to Bowie, who released the first man, and turned back to see if any more dared to crawl through the hole. For the moment, none did.
Mason yelled over his shoulder.
“The back door’s been breached. Bowie and I will hold them here.”
“Got it!” shouted Vince. “We’ll give them hell up front.”
A long string of shots rang out again from the front of the church. Bullets smashed into the walls and door, tearing away at the church. Don and Vince used any lull in the barrage to return fire, the sharp tat-tat-tat of their assault rifles echoing through the building.
Suddenly, several powerful shotgun blasts tore grapefruit-sized holes in the back door. Mason dropped to one knee and stayed close to the wall to avoid the shrapnel. Bowie stood beside him, the dog’s body tense with excitement.
“Wait ‘til they come through,” he said.
Bowie turned his head and licked the side of Mason’s face, leaving a smear of the dead man’s blood on his cheek.
The body of the man lying dead in the hole was dragged backwards by his legs. Another man scrambled forward in his place, firing several shots from an assault rifle as he advanced. Mason returned fire, striking him in the neck and head. He jerked for a few seconds and then fell silent. No one else followed in what had so far proved to be a flawed strategy.
Just when Mason thought that the convicts might abandon the back door altogether, a large man smashed against it with his shoulder, splitting it in several places. Mason brought his rifle up and took aim. When he hit the door a second time, Mason fired a single shot through one of the large holes. The bullet caught the man in the rib cage, and he screamed in agony as he fell to the ground. His attack on the door, however, had had the desired effect. It wasn’t going to hold much longer.
Vince and Don weren’t doing much better. There were so many rounds shattering against the window frames that neither could rise up to get a clean shot. Instead, they resorted to holding their rifles above their heads and firing blindly out into the street. Father Paul was also having difficulty keeping up with the reloading because he couldn’t safely traverse between the windows. They had adopted a method of sliding empty magazines to him, and, when reloaded, he would slide them back. It proved slow and ineffective because some of the magazines missed their mark and now lay in areas too dangerous to retrieve.
Vince screamed as a bullet hit his wrist, shattering it and sending a steady stream of blood down his arm. He dropped his rifle and clutched the hand, his face twisted in agony.
“I’m hit!”
Before anyone could respond, Coon’s voice sounded over the radio.
“They’re pressing me pretty hard. I’m ducking into one of these buildings.”
Mason grabbed the radio from his belt.
“Coon, try to get to higher elevation. We need to take out Rommel.”
There was no reply.
Chief Blue said, “Marshal, what can I do?”
“Give them something to worry about. We’re falling apart in here.”
A section of the back wall suddenly collapsed inward as a car smashed into it, sending large chunks of brick and rock tumbling inward. Dust and mortar filled the air. By the time Mason could get a clear shot at the windshield, the car was already reversing. Not only was the door now breached, but another hit would bring down the entire wall.
He shouted to the men in the front room.
“Enemy in the wire! Upstairs quick!”
Father Paul grabbed an armful of ammunition boxes and dashed for the stairs. Vince and Don took a moment to collect their magazines before bolting after him. When Don was about halfway across the room, a bullet hit his prosthetic leg, breaking it off at the knee. He toppled to the stone floor like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
Vince turned back to help him, but the onslaught of bullets forced him to resume running toward the heavy staircase.
Don rolled to his back and held his rifle at the ready.
“Go on!” he yelled. “I’ll hold them as long as I can.”
Without warning, Bowie darted across the room, took a firm bite of his collar, and began dragging him toward the stairs. Bullets smashed all around them.
Mason moved to the bottom of the staircase and directed Vince and Father Paul to go up and find cover. They took off like a pack of hell-hounds was hot on their heels.
A convict wearing a black ski mask started climbing through the window closest to the door. Still lying on his back, Don shot the man twice in the chest. Another man dove through the second window, landing hard on the shotgun he was holding. Mason fired three rounds as the intruder scrambled to his feet. Two bullets hit him in the hip, and a third took off the top of his head.
Bowie and Don finally arrived at the bottom of the staircase, both breathing heavily. Mason squatted down and took a quick look. The prosthetic leg was completely missing, but Don was uninjured.
“Can you get up these stairs?” he asked.
“Hell, yes!” Don rolled onto his belly and started high-crawling up the stairs.
Mason looked over at Bowie.
“Get up there,” he directed. The dog took off up the stairs, flying past Don to search for Vince and Father Paul.
Men began climbing through all three windows, and another loud crash sounded from the back of the church. The enemy was coming.
Backing up the stairs, Mason laid down suppressing fire, and convicts dove for cover. He was the last to arrive at the top of the stairs. The other three men were already clustered at the end of a long hallway. Vince was wrapping a pillowcase around his injured hand.
“Where?” Mason asked, looking to Father Paul.
“I…I don’t know. The dormitories won’t hold.”
Mason spied an open doorway to a small cast iron spiral staircase leading up to the steeple.
“There!” he said, pointing. “We’ll fight from high ground.”
Bowie took off up the stairs, barking as he went, and the men followed. Despite having to crawl, Don was nearly as fast as any of them as they made their way up into the steeple.
A loud whoosh followed by a boom sounded from outside in the street. It was followed by two more. The steady pounding of gunfire stopped, giving Mason and his team time to navigate the stairs and secure a heavy trapdoor behind them.
The steeple was an open-aired bell tower that measured about fifteen feet across. A large church bell was hanging at the center with a donut-shaped walkway surrounding it. The railing was only about four feet high, and the men could see out into the cold night. Several cars were now on fire in front of the church, the yellow flames licking up into the darkness like the tongue of a rising Balrog. Chief Blue had given them their diversion.
Father Paul began to say a prayer. “Dear Lord, rescue us from—”
Mason placed a hand on the priest’s shoulder.
“Father, while we appreciate your plea to the heavens, the time for prayer has passed. Now is the time for men to act.”
He nodded. “What can I do?”
Mason looked around. The floor of the steeple was only about ten feet above the roof, making it possible for him to lower and drop. Bowie wouldn’t make it, and neither would Vince nor Don with their injuries. Father Paul was a maybe, but there was no point in sending him down into the fray.
“I need you to ring the bell just as you did the other day. Let the town know we need their help. Vince, you and Don stay here and protect him.”
Father Paul smiled and tears formed in his eyes.
“Of course. We will send
out God’s call, and they will come.”
Mason wasn’t so sure, but he didn’t put his doubts into words.
“You’re going over?” asked Vince.
“I’ve got to get Rommel.”
Detecting that his master was about to do something without him, Bowie inched closer. Mason squatted down next to him and cupped his hands on either side of the dog’s head.
“You can’t come this time. I need you to watch over these brave men.”
Bowie whined and pressed hard against his chest. Mason kissed Bowie on the nose before pushing him away. Then, without another word, he climbed over the railing and dropped to the roof below
CHAPTER
21
A storm was brewing. Thick clouds rolled in from the west, and the wind tossed trash around the interstate like it was the empty fairgrounds of a departed carnival. Tanner and Samantha had made their way to a community called Perimeter Center in the northeast corner of Atlanta. It had been a long, hard day, and both were physically exhausted. A loud boom of thunder sounded, and they instinctively reached for one another.
“We need to get indoors,” she said, looking up at the dark sky.
He pointed ahead to a large shopping mall that was a good quarter mile away.
“Let’s see if we can make it there.”
“Okay,” she said over the wind. “But we’d better hurry.”
Within minutes, the bottom dropped out. Rain blew over them in huge sheets, forcing Samantha to hold on to one of Tanner’s belt loops to keep from losing him in the deluge. After nearly half an hour of walking through the soaking rain, they arrived at the mall. The doors to a JC Penney were already broken in, and the two stumbled in wetter than survivors of a shipwreck.
“You okay?” he asked, water spraying from his lips.
She coughed. “I think so.”
He sat down on a small bench and poured water out of his boots. Looking over at her, he couldn’t help but smile.
“You look like a drowned cat.”
She flopped down next to him.
“Well, you look like the monster from the black galloon.”
“Black galloon?”
“Yeah, it’s from a scary movie.”
He smiled. “Now I remember.”
“This place looks creepy,” she said, looking around at what was left of the clothing store. Daylight extended into the small entryway, but, beyond that, it was dark and cold. Body parts from mannequins were scattered on the floor, like the whole place had been staged for a slasher film involving teenagers and chainsaws. Piles of clothes, many with tags still attached, were sitting on counters and draped over racks, the wishful thinking of an optimistic retailer. The air smelled of decomposing bodies, but thankfully the store was large enough to diffuse much of the stench.
“It’s better than being out there,” Tanner said, gesturing outside. Rain continued to pour, and cracks of lightning lit the sky like flashes from the cameras of overzealous tourists.
“I don’t know. I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.”
“Come on,” he said, standing up. “Let’s see if we can find something dry to wear.”
A few minutes later, they stood in the dark trying on clothes. They each had a small penlight they had found in a store outside the prison, but neither of the lights worked very well.
“What do you think?” Samantha asked, clicking on her penlight. She was wearing orange bellbottom pants and a white shirt with beaded buttons and puffy sleeves.
“Not bad for a hippie.”
“What’s that?”
“A hippie is someone from my generation. They sort of lived for the moment.”
“So, is that good or bad?”
“Given that it’s the end of the world, I’d say it’s perfect.”
She looked down at her clothes one more time and then smiled, apparently satisfied with her selection.
A loud noise sounded as something fell from within the store.
Samantha’s eyes grew wide, but she didn’t say a word.
Tanner brought up the shotgun.
“Kill the light and move close to me.”
They stood in the dark for more than two minutes just listening. Nothing moved.
“I don’t hear anything,” she whispered. “Maybe something just fell—”
They both stiffened as they heard the unmistakable sound of feet trudging across the carpeted floor. Samantha grabbed Tanner’s arm. He could see the light from the store’s entrance about forty yards away, but further into the store, there were only indistinguishable shadows.
He leaned down to Samantha and whispered, “Make yourself as small as possible.”
She sank down, curled into a ball, and leaned back into a rack of clothing.
Tanner took three large steps away from her and clicked on his penlight.
Something lunged at him. Perhaps it had been a man at one time, but not anymore. It was hunched over, arms dangling in front, its hands twisted like a gargoyle’s claws. The face was disfigured with pus-filled blisters, and its eyes leaked black slime.
Tanner froze for a moment as if caught in the gaze of a basilisk. The creature latched onto him, its claws digging into the flesh of his neck, its mouth closing in toward his face. He instinctively struck forward with both hands, the shotgun and flashlight falling from his grip. The creature stumbled back, howling with uncontrolled fury.
The shotgun had fallen at Tanner’s feet, but he dared not try to pick it up. Instead, he stepped forward and stood over it. The monster jumped at him again, spitting and screaming as it lurched forward. This time Tanner was better prepared. He sidestepped and hit the creature with a hammer strike to the back of its neck. It stumbled to the ground, but before it could fall, Tanner grabbed it by the ear and lifted it back up. Latching onto its windpipe with his other hand, he ripped its throat out.
He dropped the corpse and quickly retrieved his shotgun and flashlight. Holding the two together at waist level, he spun in a circle. Several other creatures were approaching, each as hideous as the first. He fired at the closest, and it folded backward like a cardboard cutout. Others rushed toward him, screaming and hissing as they came.
Tanner shucked the spent shell and racked and fired another. The pellets tore a softball-sized hole through the hip of the closest creature. Tanner racked another shell, but before he could get it off, they were on him.
Disfigured hands beat and clawed, bruising and tearing his flesh over and over again. He wrestled the shotgun free and fired, sending another one of them stumbling back. Unable to work the shotgun’s action, he whipped it up, striking a fourth one under the jaw. The stock split its face open as bone splintered through flesh.
Hands pulled at him from behind. Tanner planted his feet and spun around hard with the shotgun. It caught another creature on the side of its head, knocking it to the ground. It struggled to get back up, but he racked a shell and put an end to it. It was only then that he realized he was no longer being attacked. His adrenalin was pumping so hard that he couldn’t tell whether he had killed all of the creatures or if some had retreated back into the darkness.
His ears were ringing from the thunderous shotgun blasts, and his body stung from a dozen different wounds. He racked a fourth shell and searched the darkness around him. His penlight lit only a few feet in front of him, but there was nothing still alive in the beam.
Tanner stumbled back to the rack in which Samantha had hidden. Before he could say anything, she peeked out from between the clothes.
“Can we go now?”
Tanner sat on the tailgate of a large four-wheel drive pickup parked in front of a liquor store. Samantha used a rag soaked in vodka to clean the bites and scratches covering his arms and neck.
“Do they hurt?” she asked, dabbing one of the wounds. “Not really.”
“They sure look like they hurt.”
He took a swig of lukewarm beer.
“I suppose you’re waiting for me to say you were
right.”
“About?”
“About not going into the store.”
“Well, I was right.” “Yes, I suppose you were.” “Were they zombies?”
He sighed. “Of course not. They were just people.”
“They didn’t look like people. They looked like zombies.”
“If they were zombies, then we have a big problem.”
“What?” she asked, setting the rag aside and looking at her nursing handiwork.
“They bit me. You know what that means.”
Her eyes grew wide.
“Do you feel… hungry?”
He rubbed his stomach.
“Now that you mention it, I’m starving. I have a strange craving for red meat. The rarer the better.”
She furrowed her eyebrows.
“Seriously? Don’t mess with me.”
“I’m seriously hungry. Aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah.”
“There’s a supermarket just up the street. I bet we can find something to eat there.”
“You’re going into another store?”
“What have I got to lose? I’ve already joined the walking dead.”
“Good point.”
“How about we get food and then find a safe place to sleep?”
“Okay, but if you start to change …”
He took another swig of beer.
“Don’t worry. My ex-wife would tell you I’m incapable of change.”
Tanner and Samantha knelt behind an overturned ambulance. The gurney had fallen out the back door, but thankfully, it was empty. They stared at a Safeway supermarket directly across the street. In front of the store was a lone child riding on a tricycle, whizzing up and down the sidewalk as if warming up for a jump with Evil Knievel. He couldn’t have been older than four, and yet, an adult was nowhere in sight.
“That’s strange, right?” she said.
“I’d say.”
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