Tommy and I covered our mouths, convulsing with silent laughter at the sight, made worse by the dire consequences of getting caught. Kind of like getting the giggles at a funeral. Duncan salvaged as much pride as he had left and flipped us both off.
Wiping my eyes, I looked over the back of the building and saw the way was clear. We scrambled down as quickly as we could, unbelieving in our luck.
Or we would have, had Tommy’s melee weapon not hit the side of the ladder opening as he went down. The entire fire escape resonated with the impact and it vibrated for a second, sending waves of sound out into the air.
Duncan and I froze on the ground as Tommy slid the rest of the way down. He looked at the two of us, shrugged and said, “Dinner bell.”
“Jesus,” was all I could say as I ran down the alley, the two of them in tow. We had to be careful to attract as little attention as possible. There were hundreds of Z’s out there, possibly thousands and we were on our own with just what we were carrying. I had a vague feeling of deja vu as I sprinted past the rear of the pharmacy.
At the end of the buildings, I looked carefully out and around, hoping to see no one and that was exactly what I didn’t see. Dozens of zombies were on the move and they were coming out from all over, galvanized by their brethren to hunt food they thought was nearby. I looked over at the gas station and I was both relieved and furious at the same time, if such a thing was possible. I knew Nate was okay, but only because the RV was missing.
“What the hell?” Tommy asked, sticking his head around the corner.
“Are you kidding me?” Duncan chimed in. I glanced back at him since he hadn’t even bothered to look. He just shrugged. “Hey, I’m a team player.”
“Hang on,” I said. “Nate wouldn’t leave unless he had to, or he figured it was absolutely necessary.” I went on. “He saw us run into the building, but knew there was no way we were getting out the front. If he moved, he can draw attention to himself and away from us.” I pulled my radio. “And we get hold of him, thusly. Nate, you alive? Over.”
The radio came to life. “Holy fucking shit, you idiots made it. I figured you probably would, but you had me scared there, boy. Where the hell are you? Over.”
“We’re in the alley behind the buildings. The Z’s haven’t found us yet, but it’s just a matter of time. Whoops, over.” I ducked back behind the corner of the building as two zombies stumbled into view. I hoped like hell they hadn’t seen me.
“Can you head north on that 40 road for a bit?” Nate said. “I’m down by a small garbage truck company. Over.”
“How far is ‘a bit’? Over.”
“Half mile. Tops. Over.”
“On our way. Talon out.” I put the radio away and turned to the other two, who were swinging weapons at my head. I dove forward into a roll and came up with my rifle at the ready, just in time to see Duncan flatten a small teen zombie and Tommy level a larger male. Both crumpled without a sound.
The two wiped off their weapons and turned to me. “We gotta go, I’m thinking,” said Tommy.
“Roger that. Weapons out. We keep moving. Shoot it if it’s in the way, otherwise, just run past. Follow me.” I pressed my carbine into my shoulder in a low-ready position.
We moved out at a quick jog, running along the main road. After about forty feet, we could hear the moans of the dead as they spotted us and gave chase. I looked back once to see if there were any little fast ones to worry about, but there didn’t seem to be any at the moment. We would know in a few minutes after they had outstripped their contemporaries.
We moved down the road and headed east, passing a few older, Victorian-style homes that seemed to be in nearly every small town in America. Each one we passed we gave a once-over and in every case, the homes seemed fine. The only evidence that there was any problem was a few homes looked like they had been left open after their inhabitants had left.
After a couple minutes of jogging, Duncan got my attention.
“Zombies on the left,” he said.
“Got it, just keep moving,” I said, angling away a bit to get past them.
Tommy spoke up. “Fast ones, coming up from the rear.”
I looked back. Sure enough, four little quick ones were running ahead of the others. They weren’t at a full run, but were way quicker than older ones would have been
“Let’s get some distance from these others, then take them out,” I said, moving a little faster. Tommy and Duncan kept up, although we were starting to get a little winded.
After about another fifty yards, I slowed to a stop and turned around, taking aim at the little Z’s who were barreling down on us.
“I got the one on the left. Call it,” I said to Tommy and Duncan.
“Got the middle,” Tommy said.
“Got the right,” Duncan said.
“Whenever you have the shot. First one down takes the leftover,” I said, lining up the little kid’s head. In another life this casualness would have horrified me, but a lot had changed since the end of the world.
I was aiming my shot when Duncan fired first, knocking down his target and swinging his aim to another. I fired once, sending a little girl tumbling forward. Tommy fired, shifted his aim, then fired again. His second shot was true and finished off a small boy. Duncan waited a second, then kneeled quickly and fired, blasting back a Z, nearly flipping it completely over.
“Took you two,” Duncan said over his shoulder.
“My front sight is a liar, thank you very much.” Tommy said defensively.
“Later, gents. We got more company.” I pointed to another horde coming down a side street, with more spilling out of various homes and businesses.
“Man, this is like a bad dream,” Duncan said as we started running again.
“I don’t have dreams anymore.” Tommy said darkly as he brought up the rear.
We ran down the street, passing a small corner strip mall. There was a cleaner’s, a White Hen and a thing called the Black Cow. I guessed the last was an ice cream place. On the far side of the strip mall was a restaurant and veterinary office. Several cars were parked in normal places, making me wonder yet again what the real story behind this town was.
I looked up the road and finally saw the RV. Nate was flashing the lights and doing everything he could to get our attention. We ran towards the truck and I glanced back the way we came.
Nearly a thousand zombies were headed our way, some much faster than others, but all of them were making good progress. I’d need a wall, twenty men with two hundred rounds of ammo each and whole boatload of luck before I would even attempt to try to take this town back. That or a deep freeze and sledgehammer.
We ran up past a second abandoned ice cream parlor called the Creamery and we were fifty feet from our sanctuary when a group of fast-moving zombies ambushed us in the parking lot of the business.
There wasn’t time to fire a weapon, they were on us that fast. There were five of them and had any of us fired, we might have hit each other. It was pure hand to hand.
I punched one of them to the ground, holding it down with a foot on its neck while I elbowed another in the head, spinning it away from me. A third got hold of my vest and lunged in for a bite at my stomach, thwarted only by the AR magazines in my front pockets. I tangled my hand in its greasy hair and viciously wrenched its head around, snapping its neck. The second one was on its feet and after me again, coming in low and fast. I stepped off the one on the ground and drew my blade, a simple Buck Nighthawk Tanto. I liked this blade because it could punch through sheet metal and skulls with equal enthusiasm. As the zombie neared, I pivoted away from the snapping teeth and plunged the knife hilt-deep into the back of its neck. The powerful blade sheared through its spinal cord and paralyzed it instantly. I turned my attention to the one on the ground, who had crawled up and was rearing its head back for a bite on Duncan’s calf, Duncan being occupied with a squirmy Z who refused to hold still and die.
“No!” I yelled, reaching down a
nd grabbing the zombie’s ankle and hauling it away from Duncan. The ghoul twisted around and blackened teeth streaked at me like a striking rattler. I swung my blade up hard and slammed it under the chin of the zombie, burying it in the brain pan of the monster. The zombie looked surprised for an instant, then slumped dead.
I pulled out my blade and quickly searched for new threats, not seeing any but watching Duncan and Tommy finish off their enemies. I quickly wiped my blade off and picked up the rifle I had dropped in the fight.
“Thanks, man. I owe you one,” Duncan said, cleaning off his knife.
“No score, brother, you know that,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder.
Tommy spoke up. “More coming.” He pointed down the street. “We gotta get out of here.” His sleeve was torn, but I didn’t see any bites.
“You’re right. Let’s get the hell out of this town,” I said, running over to the RV. We would clean up later, right now, we needed to get away to relative safety.
We jumped inside and stowed our gear, stripping away any clothing that might have zombie virus on it. Tommy took off his shirt and I was relieved to see he didn’t have any bites. Duncan had a welt on his leg, but that was the worst of it. I was very careful removing my vest, since the little Z had gotten its mouth on it.
Nate moved the RV out of the town, heading out again on Route 40. I slumped in the passenger seat and looked over at him.
“Well, that was a bust. Did you manage to get any gas?” I asked, hoping for some good news.
Nate grimaced. “No and they jumped me so fast I left an empty can behind. So we’re going to need another one from somewhere.”
I sighed. I guess this confirmed my suspicions about the place, but something was nagging the back of my mind and wouldn’t let go. I mulled it over for a bit and when the answer hit me, it was like a ton of bricks.
I called Duncan and Tommy up to the front. They had changed clothing and were in regular duds.
“What’s up?” Tommy asked, dropping into a kitchen seat. Duncan plopped down beside him.
I looked at both of them. “Remember when we were walking, we had a bad feeling about the place?”
“Yeah, what about it?” Duncan asked.
“What was your feeling on the situation?”
Duncan looked up. “Let’s see. We were moving through what looked like an abandoned town, but when we got away from our safety, suddenly there were Z’s everywhere.”
“Right,” I said. “What did you think right when we saw all the zombies?” I knew what I thought, but I wanted to see if they shared my sentiments.
Tommy spoke up. “I remember thinking we had just walked into a trap.” His face suddenly fell. “Oh, man.” He said.
Duncan looked stricken as well. “If they laid a trap, then here’s a whole new ballgame.”
I nodded. “It goes in line with the doorknobs,” I said.
Nate piped in from the driver’s seat. “What about the doorknobs?” I explained and Nate responded in typical fashion with eloquent cursing. “Well, that just about finishes off a shitty day,” he said, angling the big rig around a car in the road.
Something in the tone of his voice tweaked my attention and I turned back to him. Tommy and Duncan were lost in their own thoughts regarding what we had just lived through and what we had learned.
“Something on your mind, hoss?” I said to Nate.
“Well, since you asked…” Nate stretched his arms one at a time before he went on. “While I was waiting for you numbskulls to figure out how to get out of the mess you got yourselves into…”
I narrowed my eyes but let it go.
“I was remembering all those communities we saw who were communicating through CB radios. So I decided to turn ours on and see what I could hear.”
I was surprised. “We have a CB?”
Nate pointed to a small compartment above his head. I noticed in a similar opening the cat we had rescued was lounging. Tommy had named it Zeus, since it liked to look down on all us mortals.
“Anyway,” Nate continued, “I turned the thing on and worked my way through the dials, listening in on a couple of conversations, but unable to respond, since their signal strength was low and they wouldn’t have heard me anyhow.”
I kept silent, wondering where Nate was going with this.
“But things got real interesting when I hit what used to be known as the Public Announcement channel,” Nate said.
“Do tell.” I prompted.
“Turns out there was a fella doing a broadcast, sending it out over the airwaves, talking about how everyone should accept the new order of things and he is gonna be in charge and we all had better toe the line if we didn’t want to suffer, yadda, yadda, yadda.”
“Really? Where could he have been broadcasting from?” I asked.
Nate looked over at me. “I thought the same thing, but then I remembered an old retired Army guy talking about how he spent a year of his life being bored to death in a listening post inside the US. Turns out the Army was taking a lot of paranoia seriously and set up listening and broadcasting posts all over the US, usually in out of the way places. They were set up to be nearly self-sufficient to minimize contact with locals. I wonder if this guy found one of those places, figured out how to turn it on and was sending a message out to all us low-life types.”
I remained silent, thinking how useful a tool like that could be for organizing communities to strike out against the zombies.
“Anyway, I was about to shut him off when something really weird happened,” Nate said.
“What could have been weirder than that?” I asked, stretching my legs up onto the expansive dashboard.
Nate looked over at me. “He mentioned your name.”
19
Brother, you could have knocked me over with a cool breeze at that moment. I stared at Nate until he started to get uncomfortable.
“What?” I finally asked, not believing what I had heard.
Nate replied, “I said things got really weird when he mentioned your name.”
Tommy spoke up from the kitchen table. “Who is this guy and how the hell did he hear of John?”
Nate shook his head. “You’re not going to believe it, but it was none other than our good buddy Major Ken Thorton.”
I went from disbelief to downright amazed. My mind worked overtime. How could Thorton have heard of me? I remembered Simon mentioning he had heard of me when he was a captive in California, but had Todd spoken to Thorton about me? Why would he in that situation? It didn’t make sense.
“What was Thorton saying about me.?” I had to know, this was incredible.
“Thorton was announcing to the airwaves that you were a traitor to the country and you were not to be trusted. In fact, he came out and said that anyone who helped you would be punished by death. He said your mission to stop him was illegal and you were trying to take over the country for yourself.” Nate nearly spat out that last.
This just got more and more incredible. “How did Thorton find out what we were doing? Who could have told him?” I asked out loud, more to myself than anyone else.
Duncan spoke up. “You don’t think he found our home and forced the information out of our families, do you?”
At first my blood went to ice thinking Thorton might have tortured my friends and family to get information from them. But as quickly as my rage surged, it dissipated just as fast. “No,” I said. “He’s the type to gloat if such were true. My guess is he found out about us from someone who had been with us, knew what we were doing, and got caught out away from safety. I wonder who the poor bastard was?”
“What do we do about it?” Tommy asked. “This guy seems to have the upper hand, information-wise.”
I shrugged, not really sure myself. “We see if he makes another broadcast. If he does, maybe we stand a chance of talking to him.”
“What do you think you’ll say?” Duncan asked
“No idea,” I said, meaning it.
We rode for a ways down the road, avoiding towns and contact with anyone, just looking for a quiet place to spend the night. It was interesting that we managed to keep moving east, always east.
Nate finally pulled up into a state park area, just outside of Dayton. He parked it close to a small pond, giving us access to water and providing a little security. If we got overwhelmed, we could always retreat through the water. When we came to a stop, Tommy climbed up on the roof with his rifle and binoculars and spent a good half an hour watching the surrounding area, looking for any ghouls that might be inclined to come over for a look. Nothing made your day look gloomy than a zombie clawing at your window first thing in the morning.
After he came back down, the four of us sat around the kitchen table, munching on a little dinner and discussing the events of the day. The zombies managing to turn doorknobs was a hot topic and in the end, we decided to see if it happened again. If not, it could just have been a freakish incident. The ambush had us more worried, because that was not something that could be dismissed as easily. That was group behavior focusing on a common goal and not a good thing. Again, we had a lot of questions and not enough answers. Would only large groups of zombies work together that way? Or would smaller groups hunt in such a fashion? We’d have to be more careful than we’d been before to find out.
When our conversation turned to Thorton, the mood got considerably darker. We believed nothing had happened to our loved ones yet, but there was that nagging doubt. How had Thorton heard about me? I had no clue. I was feeling pretty glum when Tommy reminded me of a simple fact.
“Charlie’s not a fool and he knows about Thorton and his men. If they came calling, they’d pay a heavy price before they got past him. I doubt anyone would want any more after that particular kind of hell,” he said.
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