by Joe McKinney
He nodded.
Over at the far corner of the porch Chelsea had a blanket wrapped over her shoulders. The night air was damp and chilly, but Jacob suspected she wasn’t using it for warmth. She’d stopped crying a while ago, but her face was still red and puffy and her eyes rheumy. She hadn’t spoken since her talk with Kelly earlier that evening, and Jacob got a strong feeling they weren’t going to be hearing anything out of her for a while. He’d underestimated her feelings for Nick. He could see that plain as day. Eventually, they’d have to come to an understanding about what had happened. But right now, watching her, Jacob had no idea how that was going to happen. He was no closer to sorting it out in his own head, much less being able to put it into words so that she could understand. He felt lost.
And then Kelly put a hand on his arm and squeezed so tightly he cried out.
“Shhh, Jacob.”
She was staring across the street, where a zombie had just limped out of the weeds. The dead woman was dragging a ruined leg behind her, making slow but steady progress to the north, toward the explosion still glowing on the horizon.
She hadn’t seen them, but they weren’t out of danger. Jacob scanned the rest of the street. In the dark it was difficult to discern substance from shadow, but there was movement all around them.
“More of them over there,” Kelly said, pointing to Jacob’s right.
“Crap,” he muttered. Now that he was looking for them, he could see dozens of zombies threading their way through the abandoned cars and strewn rubble of the dead city. “Where are they all coming from?”
“You ran the morphic field generator for nearly two days,” Chelsea said bitterly. She wasn’t even trying to keep her voice down. “What did you think would happen? You’ve probably drawn every zombie for five hundred miles.”
Jacob and Kelly traded a worried glance. She was right, of course. In the back of his mind Jacob knew he was courting disaster by overloading the morphic field generator, but he hadn’t anticipated it taking so long to go critical. Based on what Kelly had told him, he’d thought five or six hours at the most. But Chelsea was right. With the home fires burning for two days straight, they might as well have sent a personal invitation to every zombie within five hundred miles. Things were about to get hot.
“We need to get inside,” Jacob said.
“Yeah,” Kelly said. She crossed the porch and put a hand on Chelsea’s shoulder. “Come on. Come with me.”
But before any of them could get inside there was a loud crash from the backyard.
“The horses,” Jacob said. “Shit, the horses.”
He ran through the house, scooping up his rifle as he went out the back door. He jumped off the porch just as a zombie stepped into the yard. The wooden privacy fence that had once enclosed Maggie Hester’s backyard had long since fallen down. Tall shrubs and weeds had taken its place, and zombies were coming through it from every side. The horses were terrified. They reared and kicked and ran every which way. Jacob tried to secure them, but they wouldn’t calm.
One of the horses found a hole in the underbrush and dashed through. The others followed close behind, and within seconds they were gone and a tightening circle of the undead surrounded Jacob. A dead woman got too close and he punched her in the side of the head with his rifle. Another put her hand on his back. He spun around, grabbed her arm, and flung her to the ground.
“Get inside!” Chelsea said.
He took one last glance around the backyard. The dead were closing in from every side.
“Jacob!” Kelly yelled.
The dead were coming through the front door and through the windows. He ran up the steps and charged through the back door. He closed it just as four of the undead fell against it, but he knew it wouldn’t keep them out for long. Already they were coming through the back windows, the urgent moaning that Jacob thought of as their feeding call so loud now that he could feel it in his chest.
Chelsea had retreated to a back corner of the living room. She was trying to extract her rifle from her saddlebags but couldn’t seem to make it budge. A dead man whose clothes had nearly rotted off his body was an arm’s length from her. He slashed at her with a withered hand, but Chelsea didn’t panic. She lifted the saddle with both hands and shoved it in the zombie’s face. The man pitched over backwards, landing on his side at Jacob’s feet. Before the man could get up, Jacob jammed his heel into his face. A living man would have blacked out from the blow, but the zombie barely registered it. He reached for Jacob’s leg and tried to claw his way through Jacob’s pants.
There was no choice but to shoot.
Jacob spun his gun around and fired into the dead man’s face. The zombie’s head smacked into the wooden floor and he went still.
“We need to get out front,” Jacob said. “We need to run.”
Kelly had Jacob’s pistol in her hand, her head on a swivel as she watched the zombies pouring in through every window. “How?” she said. “They’re everywhere.”
He was only a few feet from the two empty windows that looked out on the backyard. Zombies were climbing through both of them. More were breaking in through the kitchen. Jacob could not have taken it all in, yet somehow he did. He watched Kelly turn her pistol on its side and fire at a woman clawing her way through the back door. He saw Chelsea punch at three zombies that were trying to pull her down, then fire her rifle for two perfect head shots. Both zombies folded to the ground. Something invisible sliced through the air in front of his face and he wheeled around. Kelly was there with his pistol, the muzzle trained on him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that she’d landed a perfect kill shot on the zombie behind him.
“Thanks,” he said. There were zombies coming in from every direction. They needed to get out the front door and into the street. He shot three zombies near the front door and then grabbed Kelly by the shoulder.
“Go!” he said. “Go on, hurry!”
She ran out the front door, Chelsea right by her side. Jacob covered them, firing into a group of zombies that were right on their tails. Two of them went down. His third shot hit one of the zombies in the shoulder and knocked it to the ground. Watching it get back up again was all the motivation Jacob needed.
He ran after Kelly and Chelsea. Zombies were coming at them from both ends of the street. They’d been headed north, toward the explosion, but the sound of gunfire had turned their course and now they were closing in. They’d even pulled down one of the horses. A tight knot of them were feeding on the animal, tearing into it, elbow deep in its guts. But when they saw Jacob and the others, they slowly rose from the kill, teetered for a moment, then advanced.
“Where do we go?” Chelsea asked him.
They were three houses down from the end of the block. He’d come from that way and he remembered seeing businesses to the south, gas stations and a grocery store and a strip mall. They might be able to get on a roof somewhere, lay low and let the river of the dead pass them by.
“Go that way!” he said.
There were at least twenty zombies between them and the intersection, and more were coming into view with each passing moment. Jacob ejected his magazine and slapped in a new one. Six of the dead came around a rusting car and headed straight for them. He took aim and fired. He burned through half the magazine in just a few seconds. Four of the zombies went down, but more quickly took their place.
They wouldn’t stop coming. Everywhere he turned, there were more of them. They flooded the street, their moaning echoing off the houses.
When they reached the intersection, Jacob directed them south. The strip mall and gas stations he’d seen on the way in were four blocks away. In between were about thirty zombies, maybe more. Most of the ones farther off were heading toward the house they’d just fled, following the noise, but the ones closer by had already spotted them, and they were coming on, moaning at a fever pitch.
Jacob’s plan was to get to the gas station. Now that the sun was coming up, he could see a black meta
l ladder on the back of the building. If they made that, they could climb to the roof and lay low.
“You see that ladder up there?” Jacob called back to Kelly. “That’s where we’re going.”
“I see it,” she said.
They sprinted for the gas station, Jacob ranging out front to intercept any of the dead that crossed their path.
He put down two of them and was about to shoot a dead woman in a blue dress when he felt something hot stab him in the leg. He staggered and then fell. Rolling over he looked at his leg and saw a gash across his calf.
“What happened?” Kelly asked.
“I think I got shot,” he said.
She and Chelsea were about twenty yards away. They veered toward him but stopped almost immediately. Zombies were charging into the street from the west. They went straight for Kelly and Chelsea. The two women fired into the advancing crowd, but they failed to land any head shots and within seconds the zombies had effectively cut them off from Jacob.
He raised his rifle to fire at the zombies, but before he could pop off a shot, a small puff of dirt appeared in front of his feet.
Then another, just inches from his hip.
He looked up. Through the crowd of zombies he saw Kelly and Chelsea surrounded by zombies, and beyond them, riders.
Jacob’s blood went cold. It was Casey and Chris Walker and three other men, and they looked horrible, their faces burned and peeling. Caught by the blast, Jacob thought.
They were a hundred feet away, but riding their horses hard for Kelly and Chelsea. Casey had Sheriff Taylor’s M4 and he was firing it one-handed at Jacob. The shots were silent, and the zombies didn’t even know he was there until he was right on top of them. He and the other riders fired into the zombie herd, putting them down one after another, until they were looming over Kelly and Chelsea.
“Drop the guns,” he ordered them.
Chelsea, terrified by her former master, immediately threw her rifle to the ground.
Kelly dropped her pistol a moment later.
“Jacob,” Casey called out. “You best drop your rifle. It’s you I want. You and me, we got a score to settle.”
Zombies were closing in around them. He glanced behind him and saw three running—actually running—toward him from the gas station. He was still too far away. He’d never be able to make it there, not with Casey and the others on horseback. They’d run him down in seconds.
Unless he leveled the playing field.
He couldn’t get a clear shot of Casey. Kelly was in the way. But the horse Casey rode was a big target, and putting the man on the ground would change things.
“Jacob,” Casey said. “You put that gun down right now, you hear? I’ll kill ’em if you don’t.”
Jacob sighted in on Casey’s horse and fired.
The animal lurched under its rider, teetered, and then fell to the ground, dumping Casey into the weeds.
He jumped to his feet screaming. “Get that motherfucker!” he said to his riders. “Get him!”
The riders spurred their horses and charged.
Jacob sprayed bullets at them, firing the Ruger as fast as he could. He managed to hit two of the horses, sending their riders to the ground. The third rider circled around him, but the zombies were on top of the rider at that point and he was forced to fire at a dead woman who was clawing at his hip.
Jacob didn’t give him a chance to recover. He fired at the man, hitting him twice in the leg and once high up on his chest. The man reeled in his saddle, struggling to bring his mount under control, but his wounds were too severe and all he could manage was to sag across the back of his horse’s neck.
Meanwhile, Casey was trying to get back on a horse. The zombies had spooked them though, and all of the animals were rearing, eyes rolling wildly, kicking and bucking.
Casey grabbed Chris Walker by the arm and pulled him down. “Get off that horse!”
Chris went sprawling to the ground.
A zombie grabbed at Jacob. He caught the thing’s arm, twisted it behind the zombie’s back, and shoved it into one of the riders he’d grounded just moments before. The zombie bumbled into the man, confused at first, and then tore into him greedily.
More zombies surrounded the other rider Jacob had unhorsed. They clawed at his face, grabbed his clothes, and finally succeeded in pulling him to the ground.
Jacob jumped behind the carcass of one of the horses he’d shot and tried to find Casey amidst all the confusion. Casey was trying to get the horse under control, but he couldn’t manage the frightened animal and hold on to his rifle at the same time. The horse spun away from him, and for a moment Jacob had a clear shot.
He wasn’t fast enough though. Casey ran for Chris Walker and pushed him toward Kelly and Chelsea.
“Get them up on that roof!” he said.
Jacob emptied the rest of his magazine in a vain attempt to put a round in Casey’s head, but all he managed to hit were the zombies closing in around them. He scanned the scene, taking it all in. Chris Walker was pushing the girls toward the gas station, and it looked like they were going to make it. Zombies had already fallen on the other riders and were tearing them apart. Casey was standing in the open, swinging Sheriff Taylor’s rifle at every zombie who got within striking distance. And still more of the undead were pouring into the street, attracted by all the noise.
Jacob ejected the spent magazine from his gun, and was about to load the only one he had left when Casey scooped up Kelly’s pistol and turned it on him. Jacob ducked down behind the dead horse just as Casey emptied the gun into the animal’s back. When Jacob heard the pistol click empty, he jumped to his feet and ran for the strip mall across the street, threading his way through the zombies that tried to pull him down.
He rounded the corner and dropped to the ground. He glanced around the corner and saw Casey loading another magazine into the M4.
But once it was loaded, he dropped to the ground and waited.
The zombies in the area came to a stop as well.
There was nothing for them to key on once silence fell over the area. They stood stock-still, motionless, as though waiting for something to pull them along.
Jacob ducked back behind the corner. He was looking at a back alley full of trash. Over the years the wind had carried countless amounts of debris into the alley. He looked over it all, hoping for inspiration.
He found it in a two-liter plastic bottle of Dr Pepper.
If Casey could fight silent, so could he.
He slipped the bottle of Dr Pepper over his Ruger’s barrel and found it fit pretty well. It wouldn’t hold by itself, but it was pretty close.
He took the duct tape from his pocket and wrapped it tightly around the mouth of the bottle so that it formed a seal around the barrel. It didn’t look pretty, but it was a serviceable suppressor.
He went over to a gap in the buildings and scanned the street. The zombies were everywhere. Kelly was on the roof of the gas station, watching Chris Walker as he paced back and forth, watching the street.
There was no sign of Casey though.
Jacob knew he had to move. He needed to get across the street. Casey had seen him run. He knew where he was. If he stayed put, he’d be an easy target, and Jacob wasn’t ready to die just yet.
He moved in a crouch, weapon at the ready. He was as silent as he could be, but there were so many zombies a few were bound to see him. Those that did turned his way and began to moan. Jacob fired on them only when they got too close. He had just thirty rounds left and he had to make them count.
With the plastic bottle suppressor his weapon was almost completely silent, just the sound of the gun’s action cycling to indicate it had been fired at all. Those zombies who weren’t already looking his way never even knew he was there. He made it across the street without attracting Chris Walker’s attention and slipped into the tall weeds that had grown up along the edge of the street. Once there, he went down on his belly and low crawled toward the ladder on the far s
ide of the gas station.
He was about to run for the ladder when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. In the gap between a metal shed and a leaning section of a wooden privacy fence, on his belly, was Casey. He was set up like a sniper in the tall grass, watching the ladder, waiting for Jacob.
“Got you,” Jacob said.
He crawled forward, getting as close as he could. There was a good sixty feet of open ground between them. The M4, with its heavier ammunition, would have no problem making a kill shot at that distance. The .22 would have a harder time of it. His best bet, he figured, was to flush Casey from his hiding spot and force his hand. Make him make a mistake.
Jacob sighted in and fired three times, hitting Casey with at least one of the shots. The rider screamed and rolled over. He pulled himself to his feet and fell against the side of the shed. The bullet had hit him high up on his thigh and he was having trouble supporting himself. But he was a fighter. Even as the wound continued to leak out, Casey scanned his surroundings, trying to figure out where the shots were coming from.
Jacob fired at him again, but Casey had moved just as Jacob was pulling the trigger and the rounds plinked harmlessly into the side of the shed.
Casey tried to guess where Jacob was. He backed deeper into the gap, thinking it would put him out of sight, but instead it opened up a clean shot for Jacob. Jacob sighted in and fired six times before the Ruger jammed. Jacob ejected the magazine and tried to clear the malfunction, but the action was jammed up so tightly he couldn’t work it.
Back pressure from the makeshift suppressor was Jacob’s guess.
But Casey was lying still in the grass. Jacob watched him for a moment, just to make sure, but the rider was down and out. Malfunction or not, he’d beaten the son of a bitch.
Jacob bolted for the ladder. Even though their weapons never made a sound, all the commotion had attracted the zombies, and they were closing in around the gas station, their moaning getting louder and louder.
He hit the ladder at a run and scaled up it. He was over the top before Chris Walker knew he was there.
