Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 12): Abyss

by Chesser, Shawn

  Finally, as the man craned over his shoulder and yelled for help, his tenuous hold on the fence failed and he was dragged back onto the sidewalk. Which was all the opening the third reanimated corpse needed. As the others piled on and tore at the man’s denim jacket and tee shirt to get at the flesh underneath, the third rotter wormed its pallid face into the scrum and rent a fist-sized plug of flesh from the man’s neck.

  Shrill, animalistic howls came from under the squirming corpses.

  Lev heard Jamie’s rifle discharge again.

  Then the dying man called out for Adrian.

  He did so three times then went quiet.

  Lev watched one of the rotters feed a rope of steaming intestine into its mouth and chew hungrily on it.

  Having forever lost his appetite for bratwurst, he let the blinds snap shut and set off for the back door.

  Chapter 47

  Once the shooting started, Wilson didn’t have a target, and wasn’t being shot at, so he did exactly what he had been told to do: sit tight and watch their flank to the north.

  While the sporadic gunfire continued to his right and carefully aimed shots sounded from the hide at his six, he kept his head on a swivel, going from the road looping behind the auto body shop, to the length of Main scrolling away to the north end of town, then finishing on the east/west-running street and sidewalk bordering the rehab place’s north side.

  Each deliberate left-to-right sweep lasted roughly three seconds. On the end of the first sweep he heard coming from the rehab place the boom of a large caliber handgun he hoped belonged to Duncan.

  Midway through the second pass, Jamie’s long gun entered the fight and he was witness to the gun battle being waged between Lev and whoever was firing on him.

  On the fourth sweep, with the itch to contribute in some way gnawing at his guts, a second boom sounded from the upper story of the rehab place across the street.

  As Wilson sat on the roof with his gaze momentarily locked on the rehab place, three things happened in quick succession. First, his radio came alive and he heard the exchange between Lev and Cade. Next, over the sounds of a battle dying down, he heard the plaintive wails of a man dying. Finally, as he was about to set his gaze roaming back to his left and try to spot Cade on his downhill approach, he saw a person peek around the corner of the rehab place and then quickly disappear.

  A cold chill tickled his spine as he snugged the M4 to his shoulder.

  The old adage be careful what you wish for came to him as he flicked the selector from Safe to Fire and snaked his finger into the trigger guard.

  Employing some of what Brook had taught him weeks ago on the sprawling Air Force base in Colorado, he took a calming breath, trained the EOTech 3x magnifier’s crosshairs on where he thought the face had emerged, and slowly drew up most of the trigger pull.

  When the head reappeared and a barrel-chested man presented himself, Wilson adjusted his aim down a degree and sealed the deal.

  The single gunshot started a low buzz in his left ear.

  The single bullet crossed the street on a diagonal downward trajectory and smacked the man several inches lower than where the redhead had been aiming. Instead of striking center mass as Brook had taught him to aim when it came to breathers, the round punched into the man’s guts an inch north of his belly button. Which was a good thing, because unbeknownst to Wilson, had the bullet hit any higher the ballistic vest underneath the man’s parka would have minimized the damage—perhaps even stopped it altogether.

  Seeing the blood start to darken the band of the man’s blue jeans, Wilson dragged the scope up and caught a glimpse of the pain-filled look twisting his face as he pitched sideways like a felled tree. Hands scrabbling at the wound, the man craned his head and called out something indecipherable on his way to the ground.

  It was the beginning of the end, no doubt.

  And then another person came to his aid. A big-boned woman with closely shorn hair. Almost a clone of the first one to die.

  She was fully silhouetted next to the building.

  Wilson aimed for center mass and caressed the trigger two times—barely a second between shots. This came at the same instant the woman was bending forward and reaching to grasp the man’s outstretched arms. A slight tremor shook her body and the collar of her jean jacket jumped where it draped across her clavicle. Wilson didn’t see her face after that. Only the top of her head was visible as the second 5.56 round struck it. The damage was instantaneous and catastrophic, causing her hands to curl into fists while slamming her straight down onto her ample butt. Chin to chest, she wobbled for a moment in the seated position before finally folding over backwards.

  Wilson was certain he had just killed two people. This was nothing like the ambush on the road outside of Green River that he had been on the winning side of weeks ago. He wasn’t the only one firing on the bandits and their cars that day. Cade, Brook, Taryn, and Sasha were all contributors. And since then, whenever his thoughts wandered back to the surprised looks on the faces of the people that died on that lonely stretch of sunbaked road, he was quick to remind himself that his bullets weren’t the only ones crashing into the bandits’ vehicles and bodies.

  When the visions got really bad, late at night, his thoughts racing wildly, he would think of the executioners in a firing squad. Not every one of their weapons held a live round. Therefore each and every one of them had plausible deniability. That was far from the case here. He saw the blood bloom on the man’s shirt. He watched what looked to him like entrails push out from the entry wound. Then there was the woman. Her brains were on full display on the ground all around her. No disputing that.

  Wilson stabbed his fingers into his red mane. Then he vomited without warning. There wasn’t the usual flood of bitter saliva. His jaw just locked up and out came the mostly liquefied remnants of Heidi’s cooking.

  The remorse came next, hitting like a tidal wave that started tears to well in his eyes. The pair hadn’t even seen it coming. Breathing one second; lives snuffed the next. Three pulls of the trigger sent them to a place they would never return from. And he was solely responsible for sending them there.

  Wilson was rocking on his butt with his gaze locked on the tangled corpses when he heard a gruff voice calling his name. Turning an ear in the direction of the north parking lot, he heard it again. No disputing it was Cade and he was calling up from somewhere below the parapet to his left.

  As Wilson rose to investigate, Taryn’s calm call informing everyone listening that she was completely surrounded by rotters emanated from his radio.

  After leaving the four corpses alone in the upstairs room, Duncan had made his way down the back stairs. He had paused at the bottom for a tick and listened to the gunfire coming from the west. The two evenly spaced gunshots sounded hollow at first then finished with a noise like sheets of paper being torn. Suggesting the shooter was some distance away, the reports crashed around for a second or two before tailing off.

  Deciding that friendlies still owned the street out front, he made his way through the wide-open room once used as a place to administer various forms of physical therapy. Instructional pamphlets lay scattered about the floor along with therapy balls and foam rollers. Muddy boot prints were everywhere.

  As he padded through the great room on his way to the door to the parking area, more gunfire rang out to his right. In the floor-to-ceiling mirrors dominating the wall in that direction, he saw his reflection moving with him. He noticed he was walking hunched over and favoring his right arm a bit. The way he carried the Saiga on that side suggested it was made of solid lead.

  Suck it up, buttercup.

  Chapter 48

  Looking away from the decrepit image of himself in the mirror, Duncan crept down a narrow hall and took up station beside the back door. Once his eyes adjusted to the change in light, he saw the damage Tiny had inflicted. The wooden jamb on the handle side was completely blown out. The casing where the hinges were set was pushed in a few in
ches. And in the sliver of daylight stabbing through, he saw several empty holes where the screws holding them in place used to reside.

  As Duncan reached out to test the door’s swing, he heard harried voices coming from the other side. Car doors clunked shut and then the distinct sound of feet crunching gravel drifted away to the left and to the right.

  He tugged on the knob and found the door wedged tight. Probably due to Tiny using the same force to close it in his wake as he had employed on his way in. He paused there and listened hard for a long five-count. During that time, he heard more gunfire and screams coming from Center Street and beyond. A tick later, from that same direction, the unmistakable sounds of someone dying a horrible death started up. Since he had heard no calls for help from the others coming from the radio in his pocket, he told himself he was hearing one of the cannibals get what he or she deserved. Through the crack by the hinges he could see a slice of the gravel lot. There was an SUV parked sideways to him. It was gray and American-made and both passenger doors were open. The rear cargo area door had been popped and remained in the up position. Aside from a lone zombie approaching from the right, nothing was moving in the general vicinity. And as he watched the roaming creature shuffle past the SUV, he wondered why the death warbles and calls for Adrian and Mom had no effect on the thing. Whatever the rotter was stalking was somewhere beyond the rehab place’s north side.

  Once the dead thing was out of sight, Duncan slung the Saiga next to the M4 and pulled his pistol.

  Using the wails of the stricken man for cover, he squared up to the door, grasped the knob left-handed, and yanked inward. There was no immediate swing. Instead, there was a great deal of resistance from contact between the bottom of the door and the sill plate at the threshold. He put a boot on the wall beside the knob and leaned back, bad wing be damned. The extra leverage caused the door to break free. A harsh grating noise echoed in the hall as he dragged it open and peered out onto the pothole-riddled lot.

  Duncan had a wheelchair-friendly ramp and short stack of stairs to choose from. He chose the ramp and looped back around to the left to see who the dead thing was after. He was about a yard from the corner of the house when he heard a single gunshot. Rotter down, he thought at once. Then, as he was taking another step closer to the edge of the building, where he intended to steal a quick peek, he heard moans comingling with a woman’s voice. As he inched forward with the .45 in a two-handed grip, a pair of closely spaced shots from the same direction as the first froze him in his tracks.

  Taking a second to listen, he grasped the two-way radio in his pocket and thumbed the Talk key. Nothing. There was no electronic beep or hiss of white noise usually preceding a connection being made.

  He glanced at the tiny LCD screen and saw the battery strength indicator showing nearly a full charge. The channel and sub-channel were correct. Then he examined the volume knob and found that it was still dialed down to zero. Exactly where he had put it when Tiny was breaking and entering.

  He rolled the volume up. “Anyone copy?” he called. Eyes roaming his surroundings, he waited for an answer. What he heard first was a single gunshot. It was fired from a suppressed weapon and had come from just around the corner from him.

  “Duncan. Cade here—”

  Duncan was already looking for cover when he heard Cade’s voice coming from the radio’s speaker. “Was that you shooting just now?” he interrupted.

  “Just a straggler Z. That’s all. Jamie and Taryn have eyes on Center and Main.”

  Once the channel opened both women chimed in back to back confirming that save for a few rotters drawn by the gunfire, the roads were clear in all directions.

  Cade asked, “What’s your twenty, Duncan?”

  Duncan thumbed the Talk key. “I’m in the parking lot behind the rehab joint. Looks clear to me.” As he released the button to hear the expected reply, he heard Cade announcing his presence from just around the corner. Relaxing a bit, Duncan called back and rose up from beside the SUV where he had been crouched.

  After sweeping around the corner with Wilson in tow, Cade clapped Duncan on the shoulder. “We’re not done here,” he said. “Wilson”—he motioned toward the house on the other side of Center—“I want you to go and help Lev search the bodies.”

  Wilson asked, “What are we looking for?”

  Duncan said, “Just follow Lev’s lead until we get there.”

  Wilson set off toward Center Street, M4 at the ready. He took a few tentative steps, then stopped and looked over his shoulder. Face screwed up with worry, he asked, “How is Taryn?”

  “She’s well out of their reach,” answered Cade. “I think she’ll weather the storm until Jamie gets there to help. At least that’s what her words said. She sounded pretty confident to me. You were listening in, too.”

  Wilson delivered a subtle nod, then turned and hustled across the street, boots clomping as he ran.

  Cade turned to Duncan. “You had me worried there for a second, Old Man. Thought you finally got your ticket punched. You certainly set yourself up for it to happen.”

  Duncan grimaced. Then there was a long, strained silence as he stared at his boots. Finally, he leveled his gaze at Cade and started in on what had taken place upstairs. He recounted everything in full. Every last grisly detail. He admitted to pistol whipping the woman and then delivering the pair of kicks to her temple that had killed her. With a flat affect, he described how the big man had flopped around before a second slug from the .45 had finally stilled him. Brushing bits of plaster from his unruly ring of gray hair, he talked of killing the man in the truck bed and then taking return fire from his buddy, putting emphasis on how close he had come to truly having his ticket punched.

  Cade said nothing. Every so often he would scan their surroundings, giving extra attention to a dozen or so Zs wandering Center Street a couple of blocks east. He remained silent and watchful until his friend admitted to rolling the volume down on his radio and forgetting he had done so.

  “Shit happens,” said Cade, locking eyes with the man. “You’re still on the right side of the dirt. That’s all that counts.”

  Duncan was speechless. He had expected to be dressed down. Or, at the very least, given the cold shoulder while the Delta soldier stewed.

  Cade removed his hat and ran a hand through his lengthening hair. “I’m partly to blame,” he admitted. “I’ve been meaning to ask Beeson or Nash for a half-dozen sets of hands-free comms. I’m still hesitant to do so. No doubt Beeson’s teams are running nonstop ops against the scattered Chinese forces.” He snugged his hat on and turned his attention from the approaching Zs to the sidewalk beside the house across the street. Pointing to three forms standing in a loose knot in the shadow of the trees bordering Center Street’s south side, he said, “Looks like we have a visitor.”

  Duncan’s gaze followed. He squinted and a soft chuckle escaped his throat. “Well I’ll be dipped in shit.”

  Holstering his Glock, Cade began a slow walk toward Lev and Wilson and what, from fifty yards away, appeared to be a man-shaped topiary brandishing a very familiar weapon.

  Chapter 49

  Cade sent Lev and Wilson off to police up the cannibals’ weapons, ammunition, radios, and gasoline. “And check and see if the plow on the truck is worth taking,” he added before they were out of earshot.

  Duncan nodded toward the prostrate forms littering the road near the shot-up vehicles. “Sure they’re all dead?”

  Without a trace of emotion in his voice, Cade said, “I killed seven.” He pointed to his right. “Jamie dinged the two over there. Three dead are still in the pickups. The others … the ones that you and Lev caught in a crossfire on the street that didn’t die outright, I was lucky enough to watch draw their last breaths.” He nodded to the rehab place. “Wilson stepped up and took out a pair of breathers trying to flank me and Jamie.”

  “Beat me to ‘em,” said Duncan, shifting his gaze from the dead rotters on the sidewalk to the pair of recentl
y deceased men laid out side-by-side in the street before him. Mostly drained of color, their faces stared up longingly at the darkening sky. The thirty-something man on the left was fair-haired and of medium height. He had on blue jeans with skinny legs, the cuffs of which were rolled up to the tops of his black leather Doc Martens boots. The once sandstone-colored Carhartt jacket was stained dark crimson from the chest down. The corpse itself bore crude black tattoos on its neck and hands. There were swastikas and spider webs on the latter. On the former, nearly hidden within a collage of grinning skulls, was a pair of lightning bolts similar to those worn by Hitler’s Waffen SS. Though Duncan wasn’t inclined to check, he was fairly certain the prison ink didn’t stop there. The second man had been borderline obese when his days of eating human flesh were cut short. His graying hair was stretched tight into a ponytail that reached the small of his back. A sharp ridge of cartilage was all that remained of his nose. And snaking from the bloody sockets where his eyes should have been was a tangled mess of muscle and the stringy remains of the filament-like optic nerves. On the left side of the man’s face, the dermis was torn and riddled with raised purple bite marks. Adding insult to the injuries he had suffered as a result of the three-versus-one melee, the vital organs meant to be cradled in the protective confine of his ribcage had been ripped out and consumed with hasty indifference by the hungry rotters.

  “He didn’t stand a chance,” observed Cade.

  Duncan smirked. “Who’s the proud papa of these two?” he asked, shooting Daymon a knowing look.

  Daymon was dressed head to toe in an over-the-counter ghillie suit. Made up of strips of fabric torn in random widths and lengths and colored in mostly lighter earth tones, up close, the camouflage garb truly did make him look like a six-foot-tall walking and talking shrub. The bow cradled in one arm was a high-tech item. The matte-black recurve arms looked as if they were made of some kind of exotic carbon fiber. There was an adjustable stock—cheek weld, pad and all—out back. Offset to one side and riding atop a Picatinny rail was a no-nonsense high-power scope.