by Jon Schafer
“To the left, then,” Steve said. Turning to Heather, he told her, “Get everyone out here, it’s time to haul ass.”
Within seconds, the entire group was clustered in the area that had once held the front doors. Steve waved Heather and Tick-Tock to either side of him, and they made short work of the few dead between the end of the porch and the fence as they moved forward at a steady pace. A few shots rang out from behind them as some of the Zs on their flank got too close and were taken out, but on the whole, it seemed to Steve that they were going to make their escape unscathed.
That was, until they reached the end of the porch and he looked down the side of the building.
The dead were coming toward them in a mob as they emitted a high-pitched whine that sent shivers up his spine. He had expected quite a few of the dead to be attracted by the explosion, but he wasn’t prepared for the gruesome sight of hundreds of them coming at them from around from the back of the house so quickly. Gauging the distance to the fence and the distance to the main body of Zs, he saw that they were a lot closer than he would have liked.
Knowing that retreat was not an option, he yelled out, “Move, move, move,” as he leapt over the railing and fired a few shots at the closest targets.
Heather and Tick-Tock joined him in laying down covering fire as the rest of the group jumped from the porch and onto grass that had been trampled and torn up by thousands of dead feet. One man landed awkwardly but was helped up by Linda and Cindy.
Heather called out that they were all clear, so Steve yelled for Brain, jumping slightly at the sound of the tech’s voice saying, “Here,” only inches from his ear. Spinning, he found his friend almost nose to nose with him.
“You said to stay close,” Brain said when he saw the look on Steve’s face.
“Not that close,” he replied as he leaned back. “Now use one of your bombs and blow a hole in the fence.”
Taking a quick look down the porch, Steve could see that the dead from the front of the house were mostly ignoring them. A few started in their direction, where they were promptly shot down by various members of the group, but most of them seemed to be heading into the mansion. At first delighted by this break, his thoughts turned to Grimm and the Thing twins. Hoping they would be all right, he turned his attention to the mob that was coming closer with every second.
Brain reached into his backpack and brought out one of his grenades. Looking around for Denise, he saw her being supported by a woman from the group. Her face was pale, and as he watched, his best friend’s girl reeled unsteadily as she tried to keep her feet. Realizing that she wouldn’t be any help this time, he turned to the fence as he tried to decide the best way to make sure his bomb exploded when he threw it but not blow himself up like she almost had.
Wondering if he could mimic Denise’s underhand throw, he felt he would probably end up tossing the grenade over the fence if he tried. He already knew his overhand throw was too weak to set the bomb off from any distance, so that was out. This left him only one option.
An image from his childhood flashed through his mind. It was of a poster hanging on his closet door depicting Snoopy on a surfboard, hanging ten on a huge wave. Remembering what the Peanuts character was screaming, Brain let out a piercing, “Cowabungaaaaa,” as he ran for the fence.
Delightfully Grimm ejected the magazine from her machine gun and reached inside her cloak for another. Finding nothing, she let the weapon fall to the floor as she unslung her scythe from where it hung over her shoulder. As soon as she had it in her hands, though, she knew that in the confines of the hallway it would do no good. The walls were too close to get any kind of strength behind a swing. Eyeing the approaching dead that climbed over each other to get at them, she called out to the twins to follow her. Turning, she raced for the front of the house.
Reaching the entry, she was pleased by the destruction that Steve and his people had wrought, but not by the sight of her children spotting her as they flooded through a hole where the doors had been. She knew there too many of them to fight their way through, so she motioned for the twins to follow her to the base of the stairs. They had to keep the high ground if there was any chance for their survival.
Grimm had known all along that staying behind had been a suicide move, but Steve and his people were on a quest greater than hers. She would have loved nothing more than to join them and see how it all played out, but she had her work here. Taking a deep breath, she called out loudly, “Come, my little ones. Come to me. I will send you to peace everlasting.”
The first of her children rushed at them and was decapitated for its efforts. More followed and were cut down by the scythe and the accurate fire of the Thing twins as the trio backed up the stairs.
***
Brain could feel his pulse pounding in his head as he ran toward the fence. The sound of the dead whining, rifles firing, and Pep barking at the dead was lost in the thundering beat of his heart. Judging the distance, he knew he had to get close enough to make sure the bomb exploded.
Anxiety rose in him as he neared his objective. Alternately thinking that he was too close and then not close enough, he started to throw and then stopped himself. Knowing he only had one shot at this, he ran to within twenty feet of the fence before lifting his arm over his shoulder and whipping it forward as he fell flat onto the grass.
***
Grimm heard the explosion and smiled as she hooked the point of her scythe under the chin of one of her children and jerked upwards. The sound of the blast meant that Steve and his people were still alive and had blown a hole in the fence. Her grin widened at the thought that she had bought them enough time, and now, she and the twins could start the next leg in the everlasting journey called life.
And death.
Deep in her heart, she knew that when all was said and done, everyone ended up exactly where they needed to be.
Considering her own position, she could feel a burning ache in her shoulders from swinging the scythe, she had a pounding headache and all she could think about was endless sleep. She had been up all night making preparations for her final exit, and on top of that, her body was worn from the drawn out battle she had just been through and was still fighting. Her children were still coming in droves up the stairs and onto the landing where they were being reaped, but her legs started to sag with the knowledge that she had done all she could in her duty to mankind. Now it was time to rest.
She was in the exact spot she needed to be to put an end to this chapter.
Yelling to be heard over the screeching of the dead and the firing of the Uzis wielded by her minions, she called out, “It is time.”
Instantly, the Thing twins ceased fire and closed in on either side of her.
Wrapping her cloak around them, Grimm watched as her children drew near. With nothing holding them back, they closed in with a rush, squealing at the sight of food.
Thinking to herself that this wasn’t the end, but just a new beginning, Delightfully Grimm laughed as she and Thing one and Thing two disappeared under the mob of dead.
***
Steve and Tick-Tock scooped Brain up from where he was kneeling on the grass and helped him over a section of twisted wrought iron that had once been part of the fence. Connie was right on their heels and took charge of him so they would be free to deal with the threat of the Zs close on their heels. Once unburdened, the two men stood on either side of the hole as they fired into the heads of the closest of the mass of dead heading toward them.
The fence and its brick posts were scattered across the grass inside and outside of the compound, so the group had to pick their way through the rubble into the deep grass beyond. Once they were clear, some of them started to run for the woods, but Heather stopped them before they could go too far. When everyone was assembled, she called out to Steve and Tick-Tock.
After firing a last shot into the forehead of one of the advancing Zs, Steve ignored the spray of black blood and brains that flew out to take a last l
ook at where the dead had swarmed around from the back of the mansion and were now heading towards them in one huge horde. This gave him cause for concern that they would have to lose them, but it also gave him a brief surge of hope that they were drawing enough of them off to let Grimm get away. This feeling of accomplishment only lasted a second, though, when he took in the hundreds of walking corpses flooding onto the porch and into the building through the shattered front doors.
Hoping against hope that Grimm and the Thing twins had somehow made it out through one of the windows on the far side of the building before they were cut off, he turned to Tick-Tock and said, “Let’s go.”
The group followed Steve at an easy jog as he led the way through the waist high grass toward the path. Their initial hope was that most of the dead would make a straight line toward them as they moved, thus putting the fence between them, but this was not to be. A few of the stragglers at the rear and side of the mansion, the slower dead that had been incapacitated by their wounds and those without legs, did this, but a majority followed them through the hole in the fence.
Thousands of them.
With terror at the thought of what faced them at the teeth and digging claws of the undead, the group went from a jog to a full out sprint, running to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the horrors that trailed them. The grass tangled in their feet, and many fell but were quickly picked up, dusted off, and given an encouraging word or a boot in the butt to get moving.
Finally reaching the path, Steve had to yell at them three times to stop when they bunched up as they all tried to push onto the trail at once. When his shouts finally got through to them, he called for a break while they waited for a few of the slower people to catch up. When everyone had made it, he got them organized. He sorted them into a rough line with Cindy, Linda and Igor at its center, and the faster people in the front and the slower ones to the rear since he didn’t want them jamming up the trail. With the dead quickly approaching, they started out two abreast along the shady corridor of the trail at a steady walk that soon turned into a slow jog.
Everyone was on edge, expecting an animated corpse to jump out at them any second, but none did. The path narrowed, and soon they found they could only move single file at a faltering pace. After fifteen minutes of tripping over tree roots and having branches whipped back into their face by the people in front of them, pleas to slow down and take a break rang out, but it wasn’t until huge gaps began to appear in the line of survivors that Steve stopped so they could regroup. Knowing that even he couldn’t keep up the grueling pace he had set, he let them rest for a few minutes as he tried to gauge how near the Zs were by the sound of their high-pitched whines. Between doing this and gasping for breath, he explained that from here on out, they would fast-walk for three minutes, jog for three, run for three, and then rest for two.
A veteran of many forced runs in the Marine Corps, Tick-Tock kept everyone on their feet to prevent them from cramping up. When they started out again, Heather led the group while Steve made his way up and down the line to ensure that everyone stayed together.
Soon, the whining noise of the dead was barely audible to anyone.
Except for two of the group.
Tick-Tock stayed with Denise when they started off at the start of the trail, urging her on and half-carrying her. When she began throwing up so badly from her concussion that they had to stop, he put her in a fireman’s carry and kept moving. He knew he wouldn’t last long doing this, but there was no way he would leave her.
Slowly, they fell behind even the slowest of the group.
The world became a blur as he trudged along. His shoulders and legs shook with the strain, but he knew he had to make it only a little bit more. He would pick out a spot as far as he could see down the trail and head for that, and when he reached it, he picked out another and did it again.
As his boots pounded on the loose dirt of the path, he kept urging himself on by saying, “Just one more step, just one more step.”
He knew that he was faltering as the spots he picked grew closer together. His thighs burned, and it felt like someone had poured ground glass into his spine, slowing his pace in direct proportion to the rising sound of the dead.
Falling to one knee when the strain finally took its toll, he knew it was over. Despite this, he shrugged his shoulders to get Denise further up and to ease her weight so he could keep moving. Trying to stand, he fell forward onto his side, watching Denise roll off him onto the grass to lay motionless. Reeling, he started to crawl forward to pick her up again but knew that it was no good. He might be able to make it to safety if it was just him, but there was no way he could carry his love another step. Fear and anger rose up in him at his inadequacies, but looking at the unconscious body lying spread eagle in the dirt, he was suddenly grateful that she wouldn’t see the end.
With her weight off him, Tick-Tock rose shakily to his feet and unslung his M4. A burst of adrenalin surged through him, but his already saturated system barely felt it as he checked that he had a full magazine in his rifle.
His last magazine, he realized.
So this is how I die, he said to himself as he rammed the clip home and drew back on the charging handle to chamber a round. Looking down at the bullet he had ejected, he bent down and picked it up, twisting it in his fingers before extracting an empty clip and loading it. Methodically ejecting another round from his rifle, it followed the first one.
This one is for Denise, and the last one is for me, he decided. I’ll fire the last of the rounds in the rifle, fire my pistol until it’s empty, and then load this magazine for her and me.
A squealing noise seemed to come from close by, causing him to jerk his head up and try to see around a long curve in the path. With his arms and legs shaking, he knelt down next to Denise and sighted back the way they had come.
He didn’t have long to wait for the first of the dead to appear.
Sighting in on its head, Tick-Tock slowly let out his breath as he started to squeeze the trigger. Knowing he only had a fraction of an ounce of pressure left before the rifle went off and the fight was on, he was startled by the voice that called out from behind him, “Are you okay, sir?”
Spinning around, he found five of his trainees standing only a few feet behind him. Turning his attention back to the trail, he saw three more of the dead appear behind the first. Without hesitation, he shot them each in the head and then pointed to Denise, saying, “Pick her up and get moving.” Motioning to the lady he had first taught to shoot, he said, “You’re with me. We hold them long enough for everyone to get away.” As they all reacted to his orders, he added, “And someone give me their rifle and ammo.”
***
Steve looked anxiously down the trail as he waited for Tick-Tock and his people to show. After what they had just been through, he had hoped to call the others part of the group now, but he knew that from here on out, they were Tick-Tock’s people.
Upon reaching the bridge and finding that his second in command and his girlfriend were missing, Steve immediately started back to look for them. He had barely taken a step, though, when he was halted by an older man named Brent, defiantly standing in front of him and blocking the way.
About to curse him and push him aside, Steve was surprised into silence when Brent said firmly, “You’ve done enough. We’ll go look for Tick-Tock. He’s our leader, and we’ll go get him.”
Steve opened his mouth to protest, but Brent shut him up by saying loudly, “It’s not up for discussion.” Turning, he picked out four others and started down the trail at a run.
That had been fifteen minutes ago, and since then, Steve had heard a lot of gunfire. At the sound of the first shot, he had wanted to drop his pack and run to help, but Heather held him back by telling him he would do more good here covering the retreat of the rescue team when they showed up.
Looking at the fifty feet of open space between where the trail ended and the narrow, wooden footbridge be
gan, he knew she was right. His mind then turned to the confines of the trail, and while he knew from the nearing noise of the gunfire that he could reach Tick-Tock in seconds, he might end up doing more harm than good once he got to him.
Looking up from checking his watch for the tenth time in three minutes, he felt relief wash through him at the sight of four people breaking from the path into the woods and running across the clearing. He felt a second of fear, though, when he saw that they were carrying someone, but his attention was drawn off when Tick-Tock and another person quickly followed them, backing up as they shot at something unseen down the trail. He watched as Tick-Tock turned and shouted unheard words at the woman before they both turned and ran.
Seconds later, the dead poured from the opening in the woods to flood onto the clearing.
Steve took in the scene for a split second, and recognizing the person being carried as Denise by her long hair, he hoped it was from the effects of the concussion and that she hadn’t been bit. Switching his attention to the immediate threat, he fired at two of the Zs in the lead of the pack coming up fast behind Tick-Tock. Relieved when Denise and her bearers raced past him and onto the bridge, he turned and followed them, with Tick-Tock and his assistant close behind. Looking back over his shoulder, he knew it was going to be a near thing.
As the six of them raced toward the tree line, Steve turned repeatedly to see where the dead were. A few of the faster ones reached the crossing and were cut down by fire coming from Heather and Brain in the tree line, but it was the main group rushing after him that he was concerned with.
When he saw they were going to reach the bridge before he and the others had reached the safety of the woods, Steve shouted out, “Down, down, everyone down,” as he pushed the person next to him flat.
***
Heather fired into the head of what looked to have once been some type of business man by the raggedy suit and tie he still wore before switching her aim to the wad of plastic explosives tied to the rail near the center of the bridge. She had been alternating between shooting the Zs that got too close and aiming at the bomb as she tried to keep the dead back as long as possible while getting ready to blow the bridge at a split second’s notice. She could see that the dead had reached the far end of the crossing, and just like the survivors when they reached the trail, the Zs bunched up as they all tried to make their way onto it at once. Unlike the survivors, the dead pushed, shoved and clawed at each other as they forced their way across. Some were forced into the ravine, giving hope to Heather that they landed on their heads. Switching her focus, she saw that the six people racing to the safety of the trees were still too close to the blast for comfort. They needed a few more seconds, but she didn’t think they were going to get it.
