Lord of the Dead

by R. J. Spears

  I had milliseconds to react, ducking at the last possible moment, as this missile rocketed past me. I actually felt it brush my hair as it passed. It bounced through the lab like a bucking bronco, smashing and crushing anything in its path. Kara screamed at least once as it whizzed by her. It finally settled down next to a cabinet.

  “Joel, you alright?” Kara asked, her voice rising.

  I stuck a thumb in the air, signaling that I was okay, and took a deep breath. The zombies seemed to like our little rocket show because I could swear their moaning and groaning went up in intensity. A hand smashed through the window on one of the doors and clutched at the open air, searching for anyone to grab.

  I wasted no time; I adjusted the ramp and loaded up the fourth tank. I practiced my swing and then went for it. Instead of focusing on the valve, I looked up at the target this time. Just as I brought the ax down, I saw a curious looking face appear in one of the holes. It was gray and partially emaciated. The mouth was missing a few teeth, and the eyes were vacant.

  My ax was in motion, so there was no stopping it. Not that I wanted to. My swing was true, and the ax did its job. The valve broke off as planned. The tank rocketed upwards, smashing through the wall, and struck the zombie directly on the chin. All this happened in milliseconds, but I would swear that the zombie’s head popped off and flew in one direction, while its body fell off in another. The proof would be when we exited, but we needed a couple more holes in the wall before that happened.

  “We need to move a little faster,” Greg said, “the door’s about to go. Do you want me to take over?”

  “No, no, I’m getting the swing of it,” I said, waving him off. “I think two more and we should have an opening large enough to get out. You may want to get a couple of tables over here and lined up so that we can climb out.”

  Greg and Travis went into action as Kara gathered all the equipment and supplies we had collected and put on a cart.

  Not waiting, I got the next tank through the wall, opening up the hole a little wider. I was getting good with the ax. So much so that I wondered if Paul Bunyan was getting worried. My legend would spread, I’m sure of it. If I could just get the word out.

  I set up the next tank as Travis and Greg pushed their tables into position under the widening hole. Kara had her gurney full of supplies and equipment ready to go.

  I fine-tuned my aim and then brought the ax down. This one went a little off trajectory, much like the earlier one, but it didn’t ricochet back into the room like the last miss-hit. Instead of a direct hit, it went a little sideways, knocking a large hole in the wall and sending bits of cinder block into the parking lot. I watched as the tank toppled away in the sky and then disappeared out of view.

  Travis and Greg didn’t waste any time and slid the tables under the hole. Travis climbed up onto the table and pulled himself out the hole and into safety. I looked back and saw that the door was bulging dangerously as small fissures began to appear. Fingers traced the edges of these cracks as they got larger. It wasn’t going to be long now, and we were going to have a room full of hungry zombies.

  “Get up and out,” I yelled. “Now.” I grabbed a table and positioned it parallel to the door and put the four remaining tanks on the table on it, all facing the door like torpedoes.

  “Joel, we need to go,” Kara screamed as Greg helped her onto the table with an armload of supplies.

  “I know,” I yelled back, “but we need a little more time.”

  Greg handed another load of supplies up to Kara who then passed them up to Travis in an old-fashioned bucket brigade process. Two more loads and we’d be free, but the door was bulging out as if it were made out of rubber instead of wood. I actually saw a yellow and broken set of teeth chewing at one of the expanding cracks.

  I divided my attention between the door and the loading process. The hinges were starting to loosen on the door. If the door didn’t break, the whole thing would come loose from the frame at any second. I saw at least three decomposed faces pressing against the small window at the top of the door. All three faces had their mouths opening and closing in anticipation. At least, that’s what it looked like to me. It was that, or they were licking the glass on the window. I had a cat that liked to do that when I was a kid.

  Greg handed up the last load and climbed onto the table. “Joel, let’s go.”

  The door lost its battle against the zombies and exploded in, spilling zombies into the room like a bar full of drunks on a Friday night. Unlike drunks, they quickly recovered and were on their feet again. But I was ready for them.

  I brought the ax into the air again and swung it down. The valve broke off the tank, and instead of going through the cinder block wall, it went into a wall of zombies. In a very quick comparison, walls seem to be a lot tougher than the zombies. The tank hit the first zombie, and it nearly exploded from the impact, limbs breaking off as the tank drove it backward. The zombie’s body slammed into the ones behind and drove them all of them back through the door.

  Not to be too deterred, another group started climbing over their fallen brethren and started through the door.

  I gave them the same treatment, which gave me a perverse satisfaction, warming my heart a little.

  “Joel, stop screwing around! We need you up here,” Greg shouted. That’s when I heard the first shots.

  I took one last whack and sent another torpedo into the mob of undead who were trying to get through the door and pulped a few more of them. I heard two more shots, turned and mounted the table, and pulled myself out in time to see Greg, Travis, and Kara shooting their way through a small mob of their own.

  Chapter 42

  Incursion

  Anthony waited around outside the building as Rex and his team, and their soldiers scoured the building for any remaining nomads. It was slow and tedious work, but Anthony didn’t want any strays left behind. Layla hung on Anthony’s arm as they waited. He liked the feel of her hand on his bicep. It was warm and distracted him a little as he monitored Rex’s progress, but it was a pleasant distraction. He liked the attention she gave him, not that he fooled himself at all. If he didn’t have the power, she’d never give him a second glance except maybe to make fun of him.

  “What are we going to do about Wendy? Layla asked.

  He took a moment to ponder this. “We’ll leave her here for the zombies to pick over.”

  “But she’s one of us,” Layla said.

  He turned and looked down to her, and she returned his stare. She was braver than the others. Or more stupid. Anthony couldn’t make up his mind, but he admired her spunk.

  “Not anymore,” he said, “we can’t afford her soft attitude.” She looked down and moved closer to him. “Can we?”

  It took her a moment to respond, “No.”

  “You’re not soft are you, Layla?”

  “No,” she said, then changed her mind, “only when I want to be.” She looked back to Anthony, and it was as if she turned up the wattage behind her vibrant blue eyes.

  He felt the palpable effect of her attention, and, while he knew she’d do anything to her advantage, he wasn’t immune to her charm, if he could even call it that. Their stare stayed locked for several seconds and was broken when the walkie-talkie at Anthony’s waist crackled to life.

  “This is Rex,” the voice said. “We have a survivor up here. What do you want us to do?”

  Anthony grabbed his walkie-talkie and brought it up to his mouth, but paused before depressing the talk key. He looked back down to Layla and said, “We’ll finish this talk later. In my room, won’t we?”

  She slowly nodded and let the tip of her tongue escape her lips.

  Anthony depressed the talk button and asked, “What do you have?”

  “It’s a kid,” Rex responded, “A guy. Probably fourteen or fifteen. Sort of feisty.”

  “Can you capture him?”

  “Sure, but what for?”

  “We need a replacement for Wendy.”


  Rex paused before responding, “What happened to her?”

  “She got a little too soft for our purposes. I had to let her go.”

  “Whatever you say,” Rex said.

  Anthony put the walkie-talkie back in its belt clip, and that’s when he heard a light popping noises carrying in the air. It sounded sharp, but distant.

  “Anthony, when we get back….” Layla started to say, but he pushed a hand over her mouth and squeezed hard. She immediately grimaced in pain and shock as he increased the pressure of his grip.

  “Shut up and listen,” he said, any lightness gone from his tone.

  He tilted his head much like a dog when it heard a far-off noise and concentrated. More popping sounds carried on the wind drifted their way. He pushed her away, snatched the walkie-talkie off his belt, and started talking quickly into it. “Rex, we have someone in town. I hear shots in the distance.”

  Rex came back instantly, “Who is it?”

  “I have no idea. It could be anyone, but I suspect it could be the church people who left town.”

  “Do you want us to break from what we’re doing?”

  “No, it will take forever to get your soldiers loaded and transported. Layla and I will investigate. Secure the nomad, and be ready if I call.”

  “Are you sure, you want to…?” Rex started to ask, but Anthony cut him off.

  “Don’t question me, Rex. When you come down, retrieve Wendy’s collar. She’s lying in the alley.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Anthony stowed the walkie-talkie and whirled toward Layla. “Why are you just standing there? Didn’t you hear me? Get your soldiers on the bus. We have to get to those intruders. Now!”

  Layla nearly hopped in the air with Anthony’s final shout. She spun away quickly and put her soldiers in motion toward the bus.

  Chapter 43

  Out of the Frying Pan

  It wasn’t an “out of the frying pan into the fire” situation, but it certainly wasn’t a walk in the park. We had exited into the parking lot on the backside of the hospital about half way between the main entrance and the emergency room. Any closer to either of those and we would have been toast. Albeit, toast spread with a generous portion of our flesh and blood. As it was, all the noise the tanks had made blasting through the basement wall still attracted quite a few zombies.

  Our escape from the basement left us on the backside of the hospital, away from our SUV. We had one of two choices: circle around the front of the hospital to the SUV or go by the E.R. Shooting our way past the zombies crowded around the E.R. was the most direct path, so Greg was already moving us in that direction, but our forward momentum was slow.

  Around forty deaders shambled towards us from the direction of the E.R. With the exception of the farm, this was the highest concentration of zombies I had seen up close and personal in a long time, and it nearly froze me in place. A half dozen zombies lay around us, all missing large portions of their heads. Greg, Travis, and Kara had been busy while I was dealing with the zombies down below

  Kara was down on one knee, carefully targeting with her rifle, expertly blowing the heads off the zombies as they approached. Each one of her measured shots hit home, knocking down the zombies like bowling pins. If she were nervous about the approaching mini-horde, she didn’t show it.

  Greg stood a few feet from Kara and was just as effective with his assault rifle. For him, it was like another day at the office.

  Travis, on the other hand, looked as if he were about to jump out of his skin. Normally, he was a good shot, but many of his shots either hit torsos too little to no effect or went wild as he fired into the mob headed our way.

  Before I joined them, I took a look behind us and saw a handful of zombies coming from around the far corner of the building. They weren’t an imminent threat, but if we got pinned down, they would be. It would only be a matter of time. If more joined them, as I knew they would, we were going to be caught in an uncomfortable vise of the undead.

  I slowly moved up behind Travis, and I carefully put a hand on his shoulder, not wanting to spook him. “Slow down, big guy; we have time.”

  He looked over to me, his eyes wide. He wasn’t in full-out panic mode, but he was in the vicinity.

  “Take it one shot at a time,” I said. “We can whittle them down before they get to us.” I only wished I believed what I was saying because each one of our shots only brought more attention to us. And none of it was the good kind of attention, either.

  “What about those?” he asked, pointing to the ones coming up from behind us.

  “They’re slow,” I said putting on a confident smile, “and we are fast.”

  His expression didn’t change much, but some of the panic left his face.

  “Come with me,” I said as I moved off to Kara’s left, “we’ll take the ones on this side.”

  Like Kara, I dropped to one knee, and I took careful aim at the head of an approaching zombie. This was a particularly nasty looking one: It looked as if a giant dog had used its head as a chew toy. I put its face, or what was left of it, in the center of my crosshairs, took a breath and blew it out, and then pulled the trigger. I sunk its battleship with a direct hit, and it toppled over backward.

  Travis moved next to me and started shooting, but this time his shots struck home. I only hoped that we could thin out the approaching mob enough that we could make a run for it and get back to the SUV.

  Layla nervously punched buttons on her control console as her soldiers piled up around the ramp that led up into the back of the school bus. Instead of ascending the ramp, they rammed into each in a macabre re-enactment of a Keystone cops movie. She knew she was screwing up, and she guessed that Anthony was pissed because his soldiers were stacking behind them, wasting valuable time. And she guessed right.

  She was so focused on her console that she didn’t hear Anthony stomp up behind her. He clapped her forcefully on the back of the head with his open hand, sending her face-first onto the parking lot.

  “You stupid bitch,” he shouted, “can’t you get anything right? They’re going to get away.”

  The sound of shots echoed in the distance. Anthony was in a frenzy, wanting to load the zombies onto the bus and get on the move.

  Afraid to look up at him, she did peek at the zombies as they shuffled around the back of the bus. She heard the clicking of the buttons on Anthony’s console and prayed that he wasn’t sending them to chow down on her, but that wasn’t the case. She saw the zombies start to jitterbug as he sent the electrical current directly into their pain centers. Two fell to their knees, and one went down on all fours. This went on for several seconds as Anthony raged, shouting and cursing.

  She knew what Anthony was like: He would be calm and controlled most of the time, but like a summer storm, he would sometimes shockingly surprise her as a rage would come over him. Sometimes the anger was like a quick thunderstorm, but at other times, he was like a tornado, rending destruction wantonly and without regard to the consequences. She hoped it was a quick one because she didn’t want to be swept up in one of his tempests.

  The zombies stopped their shaking after a few seconds, and she could hear Anthony taking deep breaths, exhaling long and deliberately, calming himself. She watched through one slitted eye, afraid to move, as the zombies hopped and shuffled into a straight line, and then their feet started up the ramp like obedient soldiers, one after the other.

  The last one hit the ramp when she heard Anthony’s voice. “I’m not going to give you another chance to screw up. Now, get up, and get on the bus.”

  She slowly opened her eyes and watched him stride for the front of the bus. After about a second, she scrambled to her feet and quickly followed, thanking God silently that he didn’t bring down the lightning on her. Or worse, the zombies.

  Anthony’s crew wasn’t the only one to hear the shots.

  Paige shook a sleeping Russell’s shoulder. “Wake up,” she said.

  “What?” Russell aske
d, rubbing his face.

  “There’s shooting coming from the south,” she said.

  Russell shot to full wakefulness. “Who is it?”

  “How do I know?” she asked in annoyance.

  He stood and went to the window and listened. Shots carried on the crisp air. Lots of them. There was a battle going on. It sounded as if it were coming from either the armory or the hospital, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Should we go check it out?” she asked.

  “It’s probably them.” Them was his term for Anthony’s crew.

  “You don’t know that. It could be the other people from the church. They could use our help.”

  “And you don’t know that, either,” he said.

  “So, we just sit here on our ass?” she asked.

  “What do you propose we do?”

  “We could, at least, go check it out.”

  “That could leave us out in the field, exposed.”

  “Okay, listen, with or without you, I’m going out. You may be okay skulking around this town and just surviving, but I’m not. Not anymore. If there’s a chance for us to get out of here, I’m taking it.” She stood squarely in front of him, her shoulders back and chin out, ready for him to say, ‘No.’

  He looked around their house, taking a quick inventory of what was there and what he would be leaving behind if they did find a way out of town. He had a good supply of food, weapons, and ammunition. But what did that really mean? That he could go on scrabbling to survive a few more months? That he could eke out an existence until his number came up? He finally realized that this was no way to live.

  “Grab all the ammo you can carry, and get two days’ worth of supplies in your pack.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said as he turned away from her. “If it’s them, we’ll take the fight to him this time.” He walked over, pulled one of his ammo boxes aside, and reached into a hidey hole he had made in the wall, and pulled out a little surprise he had been holding back. He had found it while scouring a house just a few blocks away about a month ago. It’s a wonder what people have hidden in their houses, he thought. He seriously doubted if the thing would even work.