by Chris Lowry
But they made it to the bottom doorway with no problems.
Rat turned the knob and they found one.
Ralph stood with his back to the door, the giant .357 aimed in wobbly hands. He was bleeding from his shoulder, and it looked like a chunk of meat was missing.
They stared past the giant to the security guard’s desk. Carrie and Jess were behind the horseshoe shaped construction, surrounded by a group of grasping zombies.
Their moans and groans filled the lobby with a symphony of noise, punctuated by tiny squeals and shrieks from the two women as they fended off the Z.
“Why don’t they shoot them?” Rat whispered.
Taylor spied the black bag of guns on the floor between Ralph and the guard’s station.
“No guns.”
“But they took all of ours,” Rat started to say when he noticed the bag and finished his sentence with an oh.
“What’s the plan here?”
“Shoot him.”
“The pimp?”
“The boyfriend.”
“In the back?”
“Shoot him. We grab the guns and go.”
“And just leave them like that?”
Taylor sighed. He was getting tired of whispering, tired of wasting time. The longer it took to discuss, the more chance the Z would notice and then there would be two fights.
He was about to explain it all to Rat in a rushed angry hiss, when it happened.
Three zombies noticed Ralph and lurched toward him.
Their movements drew two more, and then the fight was divided.
Just like he feared.
Taylor pointed with the tip of one of his clawed hands.
“That,” he snorted.
“Shoot!” Rat cursed.
“You have the gun.”
“No, I mean shoot, like shit, you know, I didn’t mean it like I was going to shoot.”
A zombie moaned grabbed for Ralph, then another, and the giant stood his ground, beating them with the butt of the oversized pistol.
Skulls cracked, gore splattered and one of the Z bypassed Ralph to lurch for the two men.
“Now shoot.”
“See how easy it is to get confused?” Rat explained.
“Shoot. The. Walking. Dead. Guy.”
“Oh yeah.”
Ralph raised the rifle and squeezed off a shot. The loud bang bounced off the faux marble walls of the lobby and shocked the other humans in it.
Carrie screamed. Jess screamed. Ralph jumped.
And a zombie latched onto the meat of his trapezius for lunch.
It was Ralph’s turn to scream and he did. Carrie noticed and added her scream to his, stretching it out into a long trailing moan.
All of the noise distracted the other zombies who sort of stood between the girls and the guys and made back and forth motions like they were trying to decide which way to go.
Rat took careful aimed, shot and left them stuck in the middle.
He finished off the group around the girls, then aimed at the Z munching on Ralph’s shoulder.
“That one too?”
Taylor shrugged.
Ralph shrieked again, surprisingly high pitched, and Rat shot the Z off of him.
They two men shuffled around the squirming giant on the floor, avoiding the pool of blood that squirted out of the rip in his shoulders.
They reached the second bag of guns.
"Shoot him," Carrie cried.
"I'm not going to waste a bullet on him.,"
Rat sniffed.
"Let him go Z."
Taylor watched the giant squirm on the floor as blood puddled around their feet.
He fumbled a pistol out of his waistband, used the tip of one finger and thumb to hold it steady while he maneuvered his other finger through the trigger guard.
He raised his pistol and fired. The shot echoed through the lobby, followed by silence that was only broken by the sound of Carrie crying.
"Don't waste your tears on him," Jess tried to comfort her.
"But I loved him," her sister slobbered.
A moan sounded from the stairwell.
"More coming," said Rat.
He indicated his ankle with a shake of his leg.
"We need to shake a leg."
Taylor scooped up the gear bag the girls took from them and settled it on his back. He slung the second strap across his shoulder and balanced the load.
"You're just going to leave us here?" Jess asked.
"Isn't that what you were going to do to us?"
"It is what you did to us," said Taylor.
"We stopped him. That's two you owe us."
He hobbled for the front door. Rat fell in step behind him, just a little slower.
"We need to find that crutch man," he said to Taylor's back.
"I can help," Jess called after them.
"Come on,” Taylor said when they reached the door.
It was blocked with a sofa and three chairs. Rat couldn’t help him move it and with his hands it would take too long. The Z from the stairwell would catch up.
Jess tugged her weeping sister away from the dead man on the floor and trudged after the two injured men.
The girls shifted the furniture aside, Rat shot out the glass in a crunching shower that spread out on the driveway.
“We could have just opened it,” said Taylor.
“It was probably locked.”
Taylor tried the door. The glassless metal swung out in one smooth motion.
“Or not.”
“We just let a bunch of zombies know we were here,” Taylor explained.
A zombie shambled out of the stairwell door and lurched across the lobby.
“And more coming.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They made it outside and a couple hundred yards before Carrie bent over, put her hands on her knees and deposited lunch onto the sidewalk.
“No time for this,” Rat mumbled under his breath.
“Don’t I know it,” Taylor responded, but he didn’t move.
He stood on the sidewalk, a rifle cradled in his ineffective hands as Jess tried to coax her sister to keep moving while trying to avoid vomit on her shoes.
Some people throw up quietly. Just a quick cough and the sound of liquid projectiles splattering on the concrete.
Others moan, scream and spew as if they are expelling demons from their bodies. Loud demons.
Carrie was in the latter group.
She howled in between noisy expectorations onto the sidewalk.
“Gross,” said Jess as she danced away from bile.
A zombie shuffled around the corner of the building and beelined toward them.
“Shut her up,” Rat screamed.
“Quiet,” Taylor tried to wave him down, but it was too late.
His shout, her screams, the whistle of the wind through the concrete corridor they were traipsing through, who knows what exactly brought the rest of the herd around the corner.
But there they were.
A couple hundred zombies in shuffle step trying to catch up to the foursome.
“Carrie?” Jess caught sight of them and stutter stepped away from her sister, dragging her backwards by her shirttail.
They left a trail of vomit the zombies lumbered after like birds on breadcrumbs.
“Time to roll,” Rat said and began his peg leg walk up the road.
He was barely faster than the zombies.
Taylor watched him go, turned to watch the woman struggle to reach them and knew they weren’t going to make it.
There were too many zombies, too many injuries to stay the few steps ahead of them the group would need to be safe.
He made a decision, planted his feet and tried to wrap his hands around the grip, fumble his finger through the trigger guard.
Jess came up next to him, watched his struggle and jerked the rifle out of his claws.
“Take her,” she barked.
He watched her take careful aim, and pul
l the trigger. Nothing happened.
“Safety,” he called and began dragging Carrie back toward Rat.
At least the vomit had trailed off to a dripping moan.
She must have been out of stuff on the inside, except for the pain and dry heaves.
“Faster,” Rat screamed back. “We’ve got more of them.”
He stood at the far corner and glared up the cross street.
He took careful aim with his rifle and sent shots into the other herd.
Jess found the safety and began spraying the oncoming wall of zombie.
Bits and chunks splattered onto the street, filled the air with gory mist, but she wasn’t making them stop.
She strafed them again and they didn’t even slow down.
“Rat!” Taylor shouted.
He glanced at the corner, but his partner was gone.
“Did he run?” Jess said as she drew next to him.
“He can’t run.”
“Hobble then? He left us here to fight them.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Taylor said.
But did he? Rat was a survivor, it was the reason the two of them worked so well together.
Both had survived the aftermath of the zombie plague, a couple of encounters with biker gangs and other survivalist groups.
When the odds had been stacked against them in the past, neither was afraid to run.
Maybe the girl was right.
Maybe Rat took a look at the pincer move the zombies were pulling, the noise of the bullets echoing off the downtown buildings and decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
They reached the corner of the street. Taylor looked both ways, but didn’t see Rat.
He did see the large Zombie herd, an offshoot of the one chasing them up the street though.
The other way was clear, but it looked like a straight shot for the Z to catch up with them, as fast as they were moving.
“You need to get with it,” he growled at Carrie. “Or you’re getting left.”
Jess snarled and he thought she might turn the rifle on him.
Wouldn’t that be righteous, he thought.
Survived all of the crap just to be killed by an overprotective pre-teen sibling.
But the kid turned the rifle on her sister and shoved it into her hands.
“Carrie!” she slapped her across the cheek.
The sound of the hit was louder than the zombie moaning and left a defined red handprint on her face.
It also shut her up.
Taylor didn’t even comment on the throw up spittle that sprayed across his vest.
“Shoot them!” Jess aimed her sister toward the herd.
Carrie nodded, sobbed and began firing into the herd.
“Got another?” she smirked.
Taylor slid another rifle out of the duffle, slammed a magazine home and passed it to her.
He smirked when she checked the safety and began sending bullets into the other oncoming herd.
“Headshots!” he corrected. “Shoot them in the head!”
The sisters traded off shots, taking a little more time to make sure they were hitting the Z in the right spots.
It slowed the trio down, but the time to make a proper hit created an obstacle course of fallen bodies for the herds.
One in front would fall, then others behind it would step on the body, and trip or slip. It created an almost domino like effect.
The Zombies were dropping but the slick spots they left behind slowed up more, who fell to become slick spots themselves.
Jess shot him a grin.
He tried not to show her a grimace back.
They were slowing down, sure, but bullets didn’t last forever, and he was playing the math out in his head.
They had a couple of magazines full in the duffle, but not enough for both herds.
All they bought was a few moments reprieve, and a sense of confidence.
Not even enough time to think of a way out of the mess, or time to climb to higher ground.
He glanced around, searching for a way to escape, and for a moment, considered dropping the bag and leaving the girls to hold the line.
Then he heard it.
The roar of a muffler bouncing off the walls of the buildings.
The skyscrapers were packed in tight, creating walls of building and making it impossible to tell what it was, or where it was coming from.
He watched the Z turn toward the echoes bouncing off the bricks. It created even more confusion as some turned, and were dragged under the herd, some stopped and built up bottlenecks.
“Come on,” he pinched the sisters by their shirts and tugged the back with him.
The confusion bought them a few more seconds to place careful shots and more zombies fell, adding to the obstacles.
The engine noise grew louder, almost unbearable and a jacked up four by four truck slid around the corner on big knobby tires.
It was four feet off the ground, a single cab pickup with a long bed and a giant flag of Texas whipping in the wind behind it.
The wheels rolled over the herd, grinding them into the asphalt and splattering pieces all over the street.
Taylor couldn’t see through the windshield.
The angle of the sun bounced light off the glass and made it impossible to make out the driver.
But apparently, they could see him and the girls.
The grill of the truck aimed in their direction and began plowing over the zombie herd to reach them.
“Shoot it?” Jess screamed.
Taylor just steered them up on the sidewalk.
There were small trees planted in holes in the concrete as part of a city beautification project. They hadn’t come in yet, so the tiny saplings were barely taller than Jess, but it gave him time to decide.
If the truck chased them by hopping the curb, he would give the order to shoot.
He didn’t have to. The truck held course, rolling over the herd with the roar of the engine and slid to a bloody slick stop beside them.
Rat leaned out of the window.
“Found us a ride,” he smiled.
Taylor tossed the duffle into the back of the truck and used the tips of his fingers to shove the backpack after it.
He followed Jess and Carrie around to the passenger side and tried to open the door. His hands couldn’t grip the handle.
“A little help here?”
Carrie lowered her rifle, opened the door and climbed into the cab of the truck.
“After you,” he told Jess.
“Can you close the door?” she smirked.
He glanced at his hands and shrugged.
“Come on lobster boy,” she pushed him toward the passenger seat and hopped into his lap.
There was a momentary scramble for positions to get comfortable. Jess slammed the door closed behind them.
That was the signal.
Rat jammed the pedal to the metal and the truck roared out of the canyon and away from the herd.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Look, about back there,” Jess squirmed in Taylor’s lap.
He kept his hands up and away from any body parts, feeling a little funny about the kid being in his lap.
He almost told her to scoot over to her sister’s lap, but apparently Jess had other ideas.
She spun around, looking for a more comfortable position and set her back against the door so she could stretch one leg to the floorboard between his, and the other between her sister’s.
She sighed and squirmed.
Taylor lifted both hands up, but she took his right arm and used it as a backrest against the door. She accidentally bumped his hand, and he hissed.
