El Paso Under Attack - 01

by Michael Clary

  If the entire episode were a scene in a movie, it would have been quite hilarious. Dudley was careening the Jeep all over the road. Thousands of zombies were chasing after us, with hundreds upon hundreds joining the mob every second. Everybody was screaming directions over a blaring CD player and every now and then Dudley would randomly shout out “fuck” at the top of his lungs when he got too confused.

  It was only funny in retrospect though…at that moment it was scary as hell. We weren’t able to leave until we drove through all the main areas of Downtown. We had to make sure we had most of the zombies following us.

  When I was satisfied that we had the bulk of them in hot pursuit, we headed towards the freeway.

  “About fucking time,” shouted Kingsley over Johnny Cash. “I’m pissing my pants over here.”

  Dudley began to laugh just as a zombie ran out from a building and almost collided with the side of the Jeep. I was able to pop him in the head with my pistol before he grabbed a hold of the vehicle.

  Things were getting to that point now. I doubt it was intelligence that told the zombies to head us off, we were just attracting too many of them and due to that, it was inevitable that they’d start coming at us from all sides. It wasn’t much of a problem earlier, probably because they were a little shocked at our audacity. They stood there and stared for a second before running after us.

  They weren’t shocked anymore however; we had been playing this game way too long. They were getting used to the noise. They probably heard the music from a few streets away and began to actively look for us, as soon as we were in their sights, they charged. Occasionally, it was from the front and sides. Things were getting dangerous.

  To make things even worse, they were also starting to close the distance between us from behind a little bit. Something about the vast numbers must have enabled them to gain some speed. Maybe they were competing with each other. I don’t really know, but every now and then I’d have to shoot one down that was getting too close.

  “I can’t imagine the kind of fear and tension you were all under.”

  I guess it kind of comes with the territory, but let me tell you. Having that many zombies running after you…it’s not something that you’ll ever forget. The screams, the smell, the fear…it all gets burned in your memory.

  Anyway, we were getting out of there while the getting was good. We decided to hook a turn at the Abraham Chavez Theater and from there it would be a straight shot to the freeway.

  “What’s the Abraham Chavez Theater?”

  It’s just a huge building where they hold conventions and theater productions and things like that. Has its own underground parking as well. So it really is a big, big place.

  Anyway, as soon as we roared on by the Abraham Chavez Theater, even more zombies came rampaging out after us and in the middle of this massive horde of the undead…I saw the strangest thing yet. At least I thought I saw it.

  “What was that?”

  I thought I saw a woman that was chained by her foot to a spike that was pounded into the concrete right there in the front of the Abraham Chavez Theater.

  “Really?”

  I know, it sounds weird. Let me set this up. There is a large paved patio area in front of the Abraham Chavez Theater. This area has walkways and places to sit. It’s really a pretty decent size. I went to a tattoo convention there once and they even had a live band playing inside this patio area.

  “Okay, I’m following you.”

  Well, the part of the patio towards the front doors of the Abraham Chavez Theater has a few steps and at the top of these steps…I thought I saw a chained woman.

  “What about all the zombies?”

  They were all over the place. About as many as we had following us, probably even more. The noise levels of the mass alone could make you deaf.

  “Not to sound morbid or anything, but wouldn’t the zombies be eating her?”

  You would think so, but they weren’t. They weren’t even paying her any attention. As soon as they saw us pass, they all ran right by her and after us as if they didn’t even care about her.

  “Could she have been a zombie?”

  No. Of that I was certain. There was nothing corpse-like about this woman. In fact, she was rather attractive. I mean, I only got a quick look before I lost sight of her, but she also seemed kind of sad.

  “What was she wearing?”

  A black dress.

  “Did she wave or motion to you…or anything when you drove by?”

  No, but she definitely saw us. I saw her lift her head up and just kinda look in our direction.

  “What did everybody else say?”

  I was the only one that saw her and I wasn’t about to tell anybody about it. They’d have thought I lost my mind. There was also nothing I could do for her. We had a couple of thousand zombies running about eight feet behind us.

  Like I said though…I only saw her for a second, I could have been mistaken, so I filed it away under ‘what the hell was that?’ and focused my attention back on the situation at hand.

  Dudley made a left at the freeway and hit the gas.

  “Slow down,” I told him. “We need to lead them a little bit more.”

  “Damn Jax,” he answered angrily. “This is getting crazy.”

  He was right. Looking behind us at all those enraged, once human faces…yeah, what we were doing was pretty damn crazy, but I knew that if we hit the gas and left them behind, they might lose interest and head back down town.

  I needed them closer to the West side before we hit the gas. That way, it wouldn’t be long before they caught wind of the safe zone and headed there, but damn those faces…their expressions weren’t even close to human anymore.

  “Yeah, it’s a pretty frightening picture.”

  Tell me about it.

  “Just thinking about one little Jeep leading thousands of zombies down the freeway…wow. I don’t know how you kept so calm. What if the Jeep broke down or ran out of gas?”

  We’d be dead. There’s no doubt in my mind, we’d have been swarmed in seconds.

  As luck would have it though, the Jeep didn’t break down or run out of gas. We made it to the UTEP (University of Texas at El Paso) area, which is kinda the beginning of the West side and hit the gas.

  In no time at all, the zombies were so far behind us we couldn’t even see or smell them anymore. We could still hear them though, the screams and moans weren’t happy. I think they were just a little bit upset about losing their meal.

  We let the music play for a bit. Don’t know why. Maybe we were just finally able to enjoy it. I even saw Dudley begin to bob his head with the beat a little bit. Kingsley was finally relaxing, I could tell by the slump of his shoulders. Merrick had the top half of her body on Kingsley’s lap and appeared to be napping. Jen was looking around everywhere as if she thought another zombie horde would bear down on us at any moment and Calvin…Calvin was crying like a baby.

  The rain had stopped about the same time as we got on the freeway; I think the heat of the approaching dawn chased it away. The sun was just peaking over the mountain when we finally hit the gas.

  Now, it was that special time of the morning when it isn’t too hot and it isn’t too cold. The light was just getting rid of the gray tones and the smell in the air was fresh and clean. Later on, the day would become one humid cesspool of tepid discomfort. Typical El Paso weather in the summer, but right now, it was almost peaceful.

  Eventually, we turned the music off. There were still zombies after all. A few of them heard the music and charged after us, but nothing too difficult to take care of quickly.

  “Did you run into any large groups of them?”

  No more than twenty or so. The large group was way behind us on the freeway.

  “Now how many do you believe were in the group that came from Downtown?”

  Around ten thousand by the time we passed the civic center.

  To be honest, I’m a bit speechless. That amount of z
ombies chasing after them is an image that just takes on some kind of frightening life of its own.

  “Wow.”

  You should have been there. The survivors had told us that the mass was in the thousands, we had around ten thousand following us. If you put ten thousand pennies next to a pile of one thousand pennies, the difference will shock you. We were pretty fucking shocked. It was more than we had anticipated, and we were also hoping that the survivors were exaggerating.

  “They’ve never gotten the exact numbers of just how many zombies were running around inside the city of El Paso.”

  No, but they believe that around two hundred thousand people survived either by escaping before they closed the borders or finding shelter after the borders were closed. Georgie estimated that around seventy thousand found shelter. Anyway you look at it…that leaves the potential for three hundred thousand zombies.

  “Do you think there were that many?”

  No. I think that a large amount of that three hundred thousand were killed and never turned.

  “You mean eaten?”

  Yeah.

  “How large of an amount?”

  I don’t think we’ll ever know, but I can tell you that the horde we just led to the Westside was the largest amount of zombies gathered in El Paso.

  “Really?”

  Yeah, but there were still many, many zombies all over the city that had never made their way to the Downtown area so who knew if there was another even bigger crowd just waiting to form.

  “Was that something that you were thinking about? All those zombies scattered throughout the city?”

  Vaguely, I knew there was a hell of a lot more, but I was trying to take one step at a time. Right at the moment, my goal was to get back to the safe zone and get the people there ready to move.

  “Yeah, let’s get back to that. Are you still on the freeway?”

  Yeah, still on the freeway, still feeling somewhat good about ourselves and still headed for the safe zone.

  That’s when we saw the military helicopters way in the distance. Let me be up front about this…I know next to nothing about helicopters from the military, but we saw two high tech looking, black helicopters. I was assuming that they were military, because they had missiles under their wings. We could also not hear them. I’ve seen and heard helicopters before; they make a lot of noise. These things weren’t. I didn’t think they were civilian.

  Anyway, one of them was cruising around the border between El Paso and Las Cruces and the other seemed to be around the El Paso and Santa Teresa border (both Las Cruces and Santa Teresa were parts of New Mexico). Occasionally, we’d see bursts of machine gun fire from the helicopters. The machine guns must have been silenced as well, because we couldn’t hear them.

  “You think the Government is finally helping out?” asked Dudley.

  “Looks like it,” said Kingsley who was now anything but relaxed.

  “Don’t count on it,” I said.

  “Why do you say that?” asked Kingsley.

  “They aren’t leaving the borders. My guess is that they are traveling back and forth between two points and blasting any zombies trying to cross out of El Paso. There are probably copters all over the city doing the same things these two are.”

  “So they are just keeping the zombies from spreading outside the city?” asked Jen.

  “That’s what I think.”

  “Still,” said Calvin. I hate Calvin. “They are now publicly doing something. Maybe it’s just the early stages of a full blown rescue.”

  “I’d like it if you didn’t speak anymore Calvin,” I said testily.

  It didn’t take us very long to reach the safe zone after that and I can’t remember anymore conversation. I think I probably depressed everyone. Still, I didn’t want them to get any false hopes.

  The gates of the safe zone were littered with zombie corpses. I couldn’t tell you how many, I didn’t bother to count. I just wanted to get away from the smell as soon as possible.

  The guards opened the gate for us, and the survivors began to cheer. I stepped out of the Jeep and waved my arm at everyone. In return, they crossed their right arms over they left breasts and nodded their heads. It was some kind of salute. A few of them had given it to me before, but never all of them at the same time.

  “Well, you saved a lot of lives. Those people respected you.”

  Yeah, made me blush.

  Georgie and Tito ran up to us immediately. Georgie gave me a huge hug.

  “What the hell kept you so long?” he asked.

  “It was pretty bad over there,” I answered. “I’ll give you the details later. Let’s have another meeting at sunset.”

  “I think you better say something to them,” said Tito. “I’ve tried to keep things quiet, but everyone’s getting restless. Maybe you should let someone else be in charge since you aren’t here a whole lot.”

  “I’ll give it some thought,” I said with a smirk. “Now why are there so many dead zombies outside the gate?”

  “We’ve been getting attacked pretty heavily,” said Georgie. “It’s just started to let up when the sun came out.”

  “Any serious problems?”

  “No, it was rough for a while. We now have exactly four hundred and thirty people in here, so it’s a little cramped.”

  “Four hundred and thirty?” I asked.

  “Yeah man, they just kept coming.”

  “And the zombies came with them?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How were you able to get them through the gates with all the zombies out there?” I asked.

  “I had me some target practice,” answered Georgie proudly.

  “Anybody infected?”

  “It’s been dealt with,” said Tito.

  I wanted to ask more, but I decided against it. I didn’t want to hear the details.

  “Were you concerned?”

  Yeah, I was, but at the moment there were too many people patting me on the back and shaking my hand. Some of them were even trying to take pictures with me. I didn’t want to hear the details of how they dealt with the unfortunate infected, the end result is always the same.

  “Death.”

  Yeah, death…I’d had enough death for a little while. It was time to relax. It was time to prepare for the next stage. There was also more death in my future. Maybe even mine.

  “So you relaxed until sunset?”

  I tried, wasn’t much relaxing to be had. Mostly, I just hung out with all the survivors and had a couple of beers.

  “What happened with the others that were in the Jeep?”

  Merrick, Dudley and Kingsley went back to Georgie’s and crashed out. Jen disappeared with I don’t know who, and Calvin and Tito started talking. I almost warned Tito about Calvin being an asshole, but I figured that Tito would figure it out on his own in a short while.

  Sometime before sunset I changed my clothes to jeans, a white t-shirt and some combat boots. I didn’t have much choice in the whole changing clothes thing. My previous clothes were filthy, smelly and torn all to hell. I left all my gear at Georgie’s except for my rifle and headed over to the gates for some target practice.

  I would have liked to have gotten a shower, but a sudden wave of zombies came rushing at the gate. Time for a shower would hopefully come later; at least that was what I was hoping.

  It took the rest of the day, but as soon as we handled the zombies at the gate with some help from the guards, Georgie and I headed back to his house to have that meeting.

  It was kinda cool being on the gate and shooting the zombies. A pretty big crowd had gathered to watch. Every time I brought one of them down, a massive cheer rose out over the safe zone. Georgie and I had a competition over who could bring down the most.

  “Who won?”

  I did, by five.

  “How did it feel to have all those people cheering for you?”

  I felt like a rock star. I’ve never had a run in with fame before. It was kinda fun. I mean…
I wish it was under more pleasant circumstances and all, but it was still kinda fun.

  I think Georgie was enjoying the run off as well.

  “Run off?”

  Yeah, since he and I have been pals for over ten years, he was getting a lot of attention as well. Also, Georgie can be a pretty funny guy most of the time. He’s not always the pain in the ass that I described earlier. Most of the time, he’ll have you in stitches.

  Both of us were somewhat reluctant to head back to Georgie’s house, but the meeting needed to be held.

  “Who came to the meeting?”

  Georgie, Merrick, Tito, Dudley, Kingsley, Ivana, Lucy, Jen (for some reason) and I, Calvin tried to get in the meeting with Tito, but Dudley grabbed him by the collar and tossed him out the front door.

  “Because you didn’t like him?”

  Nobody liked him.

  Once again, the bully in me joins in on the laughter.

  “What happened at the meeting?”

  The first thing I did, with a little help from Dudley was tell them everything that happened down town. They weren’t happy to hear about all the zombies headed our way.

  “I can imagine that they weren’t. What did they say?”

  Just what you’d expect.

  “Why the hell would you lead them to us Jax?” asked Tito.

  “Because, by the time they get here, why aren’t going to be here,” I answered. “We’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Georgie. “I did the research that you asked me to do. Every exit in and out of El Paso is now fenced in with a ten foot high chain link fence that runs a mile wide on each side of the road. After that, the military has patrols moving in hummers around all the open areas. They’re ordered to shoot anything trying to move out of El Paso between the fences.”

  “How many hummers?” I asked.

  “A lot, enough to cover the open areas and then some, they aren’t taking any chances. There haven’t been any escapes either. Rumor has it, that a lot of civilians have been shot as well.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I mumbled. “It wouldn’t only be the zombies trying to get out, I’m sure that some of the survivors tried to make a break for it as well. There’s a lot of desert between the borders, they probably thought they could make it without being discovered.”