All That I See - 02

by Shane Gregory

  I looked over toward the highway.

  “We blowed the hell out of the floodwall too,” he said. “You never seen the like of goons that come over the bridge we built. It was funny as shit.”

  “Why?”

  “Shit, I do as I’m told. Wheeler is my commandin’ officer, you know? That’s how shit’s gotta be.”

  “Where is he? Where’s the rest of your gang?”

  “We ain’t no gang,” he sneered. “We’re a unit. I done radioed. Hell, they’re comin’ here to get me. Never leave a man behind, you know? They’re comin’ here to fuck you up….that is if there’s anythang left of you when I’m done.”

  “This is what is going to happen,” I said. “You are going to hop down inside this thing, and you’re going to use any shells you have left to destroy that bridge. That should slow up some of the traffic coming in.”

  He laughed, “Hell no.”

  “Are the creatures from Riverton really coming?” I asked.

  “I said they were.”

  “Then blow up the bridge.”

  “Nah,” he said. “I’m going to sit here and smoke and wait on Wheeler. You are in such deep shit. I tell you—“

  He didn’t get to finish his sentence, because I kicked him in the mouth. He rolled backward off the tank to the ground. He started to get up, but I shot him in the knee. He wailed in pain. I stood on the turret and watched the zombies make a meal of him.

  While the creatures were distracted, I climbed down on the other side, and made a wide circle around the tank. I would have to take the other dead men’s truck. On my way, I stopped at the smoking remains of the Ram F*ckin’ Fo’ by Fo’ to see if anything in the cab had survived. The truck was on its side. The windshield had been obliterated, so I was able to climb right in. I was surprised to find the bottle of wine unharmed. One of the dead men’s rifles, a .30-30, had survived as well. I took them then I took their truck.

  I pulled out of the cemetery then around and onto the bridge. I headed north to see if what they said was true about the zombies from Riverton. I also wanted to know how much damage they had done north of Clayfield.

  I was disgusted by what I saw. I know it shouldn’t matter, but it did. Clayfield is my hometown. It is where I was born and where I grew up. The only time I was really away was when I was in college. I love the town even if all the good citizens had changed into monsters. These assholes had turned the area north of town into smoldering rubble. It looked like something from a war movie. Black smoke billowed and rolled from several places merging into one big cloud. There was a slight breeze from the south, so I was able to stop a couple of blocks away and stay out of the smoke. Ahead, visibility had been reduced considerably. The four-lane highway, cluttered with debris, disappeared into the dark haze.

  I parked and got out. I leaned against the front of the truck and unscrewed the lid on that bottle of cheap red. I took a drink and surveyed the battered landscape in front of me. I was grateful they had stopped here to have their fun. Downtown Clayfield’s old buildings, though scarred from the initial unrest, were at least still standing and mostly intact. I took another drink. There was a partial pack of cigarettes in the truck; I was tempted to have one. Why the hell not? I was alone here, and my days were likely numbered anyway. What did I have to look forward to? I took another drink and listened to the ringing in my ears. Why the hell not indeed.

  I went back to the cab and climbed in, leaving the door open. I pushed in the truck’s cigarette lighter and tapped a Pall Mall out of the pack. The scent of the unlit cigarette brought on a wave of nostalgia. The lighter popped out, and I immediately felt a twinge of pain where my earlobe used to be. I touched the end of the lighter to my cigarette and drew in a long breath. It was good….disgusting, but good. I exhaled and coughed, my lungs no longer accustomed to it. It made me light-headed, but I took another drag. Of course, I couldn’t allow myself to have any more. I could remember how difficult it was for me to run back in the days when I was a smoker, and I didn’t need anything slowing me down.

  I took another drink of wine and just stared. My next plan should be to find a tractor with a plow or disc attached so I could break the ground at the stables. Tractors, like guns, were easy to find around Clayfield.

  Then I saw movement ahead in the haze that was different from the movement of the smoke. I took another drink then leaned forward against the steering wheel, squinting to see. A person emerged from the smoke, walking on the center, double, yellow lines. It was a woman, and her hair was all frizzed out away from her head. She was infected, but not yet in a state of decay. Then another came out of the smoke. Then hundreds came. The undead from Singletree and Riverton and, I suppose, from across the river, had arrived. Clayfield was about to “get all gooned up.”

  Chapter 44

  Naturally, I was concerned, but I didn’t get frantic the way I might have a month before. I would just get out of their way. The streets of Clayfield had been clogged with zombies before, and this would be no different. I made a U-turn and drove up onto the bridge then made another U-turn so I could watch them come in. I wanted to get an idea about numbers. Down below me to my right were the railroad tracks, the cemetery, and the other tank.

  The crowd was enormous. They just kept coming out of the smoke. There were thousands. I was kind of glad my ears were ringing so I couldn’t hear the sound of them.

  Then I could see the shadow of something big coming through the haze. I cranked my truck and another tank punched out of the smoke like a football team making an entrance through a breakaway banner. It was moving fast and smearing every zombie in its path. The cannon was pointed behind it, and there was someone on the turret manning the .50 caliber machine gun. Directly behind the tank was one of those armored personnel carriers that looked like a big, camo SUV with a gun on top.

  I shifted into reverse and backed away as fast as I could. I went down over the rise of the hill, turned, and shifted into drive, heading toward downtown ClayfieId. In my mirror, I saw the tank top the hill. I wanted to get out of view. I took a left to shelter between two buildings. I waited, hoping they would blow past. They did not. The tank rolled to a stop in front of me. The guy on the machine gun swiveled around and gave me a wave. I was confused by their friendliness then I remembered I was in one of their vehicles. I watched in my mirror and waved back. Then the personnel carrier pulled alongside the tank. The driver’s door opened and out stepped Wheeler.

  I took a drink of wine and wiped my mouth on my arm. Wheeler waved to me then looked down the street behind his vehicle to see how close the zombies were. He adjusted his NASCAR cap and started toward me. I took another drink, put the bottle down, grabbed the AR-15, and climbed out, keeping my head down.

  “They cleared out!” he yelled to me. “We ought to cross over into Illinois while we can. Y’all did real good!”

  I lifted my rifle to my shoulder and put the sights on him.

  He stopped, “What are you doing?!”

  Men like him are supposed to die in some spectacular way, I suppose. He didn’t. It was quick, and he was confused by it all. I was okay with that. I suppose, too, that I could have given one of those bad one-liners like they do in action movies before I shot him. I could have said something like, “Welcome back to Gayfield, mothafuckah!” But I couldn’t think of anything to say at the time, and it would have been silly anyway. After he hit the ground, I put a bullet in his groin…just because.

  I was startled when I heard the .50 caliber. I looked up expecting to die any second, but the man on the machine gun was pointing his weapon down the street at the approaching horde. I jumped back in my truck, and pulled away from there.

  Just as I got over to the next street, the machine gunner looked over to check on Wheeler. Finding him dead and seeing me in retreat, he swiveled around. I mashed the gas pedal, and I almost made it. That .50 caliber chewed up the rear end of my truck including my back right tire. It wasn’t enough to stop me right then, but it slowed
me down, and eventually I would have to abandon the vehicle.

  I drove as well as I could down the residential street, and kept glancing in my mirror for any sign of pursuit. When I got to the next intersection, I looked to my right. On the street over, running parallel with me was the tank, just a couple of beats behind me. I knew, however, that at my current rate of speed, they could catch up by the next cross street. Then in my mirror, the personnel carrier turned onto my street.

  I took a hard left into a driveway, then across the small lawns of two different houses and crashed through a picket fence to the next street over. I made a left heading back toward the Sons of the Confederacy Cemetery.

  I limped along for two and a half blocks then the truck refused to go. The transport came around the corner fast. I grabbed my two rifles and left the truck. I ran first down the road then cut through a yard and between two houses. The transport followed. In the distance, I heard the chng chng chng chgung! of the machine gun on the tank. It sounded like it was several blocks away, possibly even in downtown.

  I tried to stick to narrow spaces so my pursuers couldn’t follow. The vehicle stopped briefly and six men emptied out of the back. Then the transport sped down the street to head me off while the men came in from behind. The guns I was carrying were slowing me down, but I didn’t dare drop them. I needed to find a place to make a stand. I was tempted to run into one of the houses I kept passing, but I knew I’d be like a fish in a barrel for them there. I took a quick peak over my shoulder. They were fanning out. I had to do something quickly or they would surround me. One of them took a shot at me.

  I spotted a figure out of the corner of my eye and turned my head. It was a zombie shuffling my direction beside a house. I kept running. Then there were four zombies ahead of me. I cut around a parked car and ran behind a house where it shared a yard with another house. The next street over was jammed with the undead. It was the overflow from the Riverton migration. I hadn’t been paying attention to my exact location, but I was very close to the cemetery.

  Behind me were six men with guns. To my left were thousands of hungry zombies. One more block and I would be in the cemetery. It wasn’t ideal, but at least there would be plenty of stones I could hide behind. Where was the troop transport? Another shot rang out. If I could just get into the cemetery….

  Then the big, armored truck was suddenly in front of me. I didn’t miss a step; I changed direction and headed off to the right. That’s about when everything converged. I heard the guns opening up behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see the men engaging the advancing undead horde.

  The Sons of the Confederacy Cemetery is not a Civil War cemetery. There are graves from that time period in there, but there are also older and recent graves there too. The Sons of the Confederacy was the organization that paid for the maintenance of the grounds for several decades until all its members died off and the upkeep fell to the city. The name stuck, however. The cemetery covers tens of acres and is park-like with old trees, walking paths, and benches. Some of the wealthier families of Clayfield’s past had been able to afford more elaborate stones, statues, or above ground burials in mausoleums. In the middle of the cemetery was a twenty-foot obelisk topped by a stone angel holding a trumpet.

  I kept my eyes on the angel. From where I was at the time, I could just see it above the trees. That was my destination. I knew that the monument was flanked with double mausoleums on either side. It would provide excellent cover, and if I needed, I could climb out of reach of the creatures. The grounds had changed some since my last visit. I had never seen the grass this high before. It wasn’t overgrown by any stretch, but it was about calf high on me. Of course, by the end of the year, the place would be unrecognizable. Nature would reclaim everything eventually.

  As I ran past the second row of headstones, the stone to my immediate left was shattered by a bullet. There was a very old mausoleum and a juniper tree ahead, and I decided to take cover between them for a moment so I could assess the situation and catch my breath.

  Out in the street that bordered the cemetery, the undead pressed in. I looked to the hill and bridge that rose up next to the cemetery and over the railroad tracks. It was packed with them. The healthy men that were pursuing me were dangerously close to the mass of people closing in on them. They would fire into the mob, fall back, fire again, and fall back. They were wasting time and bullets. They should have focused their efforts on running. The troop transport had moved down the street and had entered the cemetery near the back fence.

  I took off again toward the angel monument. There were zombies in the cemetery too, and I didn’t think they were with the Riverton group. There weren’t many of them, but they were scattered around, and they made me nervous.

  I ran past four more rows of headstones and stopped to check my back. The zombies had advanced well into the cemetery. The healthy men, now down to four, were moving my direction backward through the stones firing into the crowd. The .50 caliber machine gun on the tank sounded closer now. Off to my left, the armored truck was weaving through the stones on its way toward the healthy survivors.

  I had an opportunity now to reduce one of my enemies. If I waited and allowed that armored transport to pick up the men, I would have to deal with them later. I did a quick look around to make sure none of the zombies were close to me then I knelt behind a headstone and used it to steady my rifle.

  When I was a kid, I watched this old movie with my mom. It was Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper. For some reason, the most memorable scene in the movie is where the main character talks about shooting geese. He said you shouldn’t shoot the lead goose, because the other geese would scatter. If you start with the last goose, you could shoot them all. That memory came to me as I was kneeling there behind that headstone and lining my gun sights up on the four men running for their truck.

  The last goose was shorter than the others. He was working harder to keep up and stay ahead of the zombies. I thought they might just get him anyway. If I shot the guy in front of him, it would probably slow him down for that second or two needed for the creatures to catch him. I moved the rifle, aimed at the third man, and fired. He fell to the ground, and his running momentum sent him tumbling. The short fellow behind him hesitated and looked around. You can’t hesitate when zombies are on your ass.

  I moved my gun to take out the second man back. I fired, and he fell. The man in back slowed again, unsure what to do, and that’s when they caught up. One of the things snagged his shirt collar. He twisted out of its grasp, but five more swarmed in. He went down beneath them.

  The man in the front never looked back. He almost made it to the personnel carrier, but I got him before he could. The carrier kept on coming, but when the driver noticed that the men were down, he changed direction, heading deeper into the cemetery and away from the army of zombies. The horde continued to press in, so I made for my destination.

  When I made it to the monument, I stopped. I stood at the base of the obelisk and looked up at the angel then to the two mausoleums on either side. Then I looked back to the advancing mob. While this would have been a good place to make a stand against those few healthy men, it would be a bad place to get surrounded by thousands of undead. I decided to keep moving.

  About two hundred yards ahead was the short fence that separated the cemetery grounds from the railroad tracks. Between the fence and me were three zombies, but they would be easy to avoid. Off to my right, still driving around amidst the stones and trees was the personnel carrier. It had at least one person inside, but I thought there were probably more. I made for the fence.

  Once I was clear of the cluster of large monuments and trees, I entered an area of the newer headstones that rose only about thigh high. There were no trees out there either. I was exposed. The truck moved to intercept me. Behind the windshield, I saw the driver on a radio.

  Chapter 45

  Behind me, over the moans of the undead, I heard the tank rolling in. Then, boom! I venture
d a glance over my shoulder. Smoke curled out of the end of the cannon, and tiny bits of stone sprayed out around the angel monument. The obelisk and angel were coming down toward me like a felled tree. The creatures were already around it by that time, and the thing slammed down on them breaking up in sections.

  The troop carrier veered away from me to stay out of the tank’s line of fire. Then the .50 caliber started up. The tops of headstones shattered to the left of me. I cut to the right and rolled down behind a stone. Dirt skipped into the air as the steady stream of bullets walked toward me. Then chunks of the headstone were chiseled away. I curled up into a ball and did my best to cover my head. I wished I had grabbed that Kevlar helmet, but I didn’t know how effective it would be against a gun like that anyway. The bullets moved on, taking out most of the next stone, and then came back for another pass.

  I might have imagined it, but I thought I actually felt the wind from the bullets as they came over me. Then the machine gun stopped. The moaning was getting closer. I didn’t want to get up and make a target of myself, but if I stayed any longer…

  Before I could finish my thought, the first one stumbled into view. I pulled myself up and looked over the jagged stone. The sea of walking corpses was upon me. Many of them had their backs to me. Only the closest ones had noticed me. It was as if the mass was being pushed into the cemetery against their will. Their focus was on the tank, but because of the number of them flooding into Clayfield, those on the outside edges were being pushed out to make room. I imagined that if the scene were witnessed from the air, it would look like spilled ink spreading.

  The few that had noticed me—ten or so—came for me. They were mere feet away. I ran for the fence and the railroad tracks. One of them was faster than the others. She hadn’t been infected very long. She was wearing heavy, brown Carhartt pants and a long-sleeve denim shirt. Her hands were protected with leather work gloves, and she had a pistol under her left arm in a shoulder holster and the holster on her hip was empty. A big knife was in a sheath just above her boot. She’d survived for a few weeks, but her luck had run out recently. There was a plug of flesh bitten out of her cheek just below her left eye. She was young and fit. I didn’t know if I could outrun her, but I didn’t want to pause long enough to shoot her.