Zombie Fallout | Book 14 | The Trembling Path

by Tufo, Mark

  Ravens, which had been watching the proceedings and waiting for their chance to grab a bite, now began to fly kamikaze-style right into the blades, the engine, the windscreen…they didn’t seem all too particular on what they hit. These smaller birds did not have the same effect as the vultures, but the sky was filling with them. Blood coated the entirety of the glass; soon the pilots would have difficulty discerning friend from foe and there would be no outrunning that barrage. The helicopter peeled away while it could. We had a momentary reprieve as the zombies replenished their dead stock. The two new squads had taken up positions, but now another enemy presented itself: ammunition, or rather, the lack of it. Most on the wall had not brought more than a couple of magazines, falsely believing we were giving the zombies a demonstration of our superior power, never imagining we would have to hold back a full-scale invasion.

  Zombies were getting past our line, not many, but we couldn’t spare the soldiers to wipe up the drips and drabs when we were drowning in a flood. Finally I could hear the tank coming; the heavy machine gun from its turret was cutting down the enemy from behind. Thankfully they hadn’t brought out the big gun. They were using the bulk of the massive machine to quite literally crush the invaders. I could feel the approach of the tank, or so I thought. Got an update on how wrong I was pretty quickly.

  “Bulkers!” someone shouted. Seemed only right; Dewey was countering our heaviest weapon with his own. I still figured this as a mismatch. Should have known better; the zombie king was a much better tactician than I was. I reacted to what happened on the battlefield, but Dewey was the one forcing the action.

  I didn’t need anyone to tell me what was happening as I felt, rather than saw, the shriekers. We were far enough away that it was still only a minor irritant, an asshole renegade malaria-carrying, mosquito buzzing around a bedroom in the middle of the night looking for a quick midnight blood snack, type irritant. For those closer, it would have felt like having your brain cleaved in two by a blunt object.

  “Go, go!” I urged Stenzel. I pointed back up the wall. “The shriekers first, then the bulkers!”

  Zombies were still pouring in like they were being spilled over a broken dam, but the gates looked to be about halfway shut. I don’t know which of the fuckers was giving Dewey his intel, but I figured as soon as he realized he was losing the gates, he would re-direct his forces there. I smacked BT’s shoulder and pointed to the spot some thirty yards away. A half dozen Marines were doing their best to shut the gate.

  “Help them! I’ll watch your back!” We were running there when a zombie completely broadsided me. There is something so shocking about being hit out of nowhere; your entire body flashes into what the fuck! mode. The right side of my face collided with my shoulder, my rib cage was shoved out of place, and I stumbled as my legs buckled. I think the only thing that saved me was that the zombie that bowled me over had been going for another, and I’d stepped in his way. The thing about zombies, though, is they are an equal opportunity killer. He immediately turned. I’d spun down, no more than a couple of feet from the impact; the zombie had gone a few steps past that, but even now was scrambling on all fours to get back to me. I was pushing; my hands entirely too busy trying to scramble me away and/or upright to be able to use my rifle.

  I kept expecting BT to save the day. Didn’t know it at the time, but he was playing keep the flesh away from a dangerous trio. My zombie was making much better time as he loped like a dog to my backward crab-walk. His hand grabbed my knee, his head dipped down, I kicked with my free leg, bastard was able to evade the majority of it, but I still left a nasty scrape down the entire side of his face. His head may have twisted, but his eyes never left mine and his hand on my knee might as well have been glued in place. He was putting as much weight on it as he could to keep me from moving. I kept kicking out and he kept trying to pin my other leg down. My rifle, at this point, was more of a hindrance. I couldn’t spare the time to get my sidearm and my knife, attached to my leg, felt like it was a mile and a half away during a blizzard.

  I kicked out again, this one flush to the face. I’d cracked his nose so completely it was laying flat to the side. He looked like the self-portrait of a kindergartner. Didn’t make him any less scary or determined, though. He had his mind set on grabbing my other leg; half of my movements were me just trying not to let that happen. This needed to end quickly, and if he got a call out to another or a friend just wanted to join in the action, it certainly would be; due to my positioning I was already overmatched. The zombie finally latched on to my free leg. I pulled my knees up as I raised my torso in the classic sit-up position. I punched that fucker in the side of the head hard enough I thought my hand was going to snap. His head flounced to the side, but he recovered quickly. His brackish black teeth were clicking together, but it was his breath, though, the fetid, disgusting, foul wind, smell of virulent decay that really had me. It was as if death traveled along that exhalation. And in a way, it did.

  “Diiiieee,” he hissed. It wasn’t said with anger but rather with need, or there was a possibility he wanted to die instead of being trapped in his hell, I would do my best to help. The verbalization of his desire, and that he had the ability to do so, was something I was never going to be able to get over. His eyes looked down to my chest, considering ways to get at the provisions I provided underneath my clothing. I punched him again in the skull, but he’d been expecting it this time and turned his head so rapidly that to strike again, I risked having my hand go knuckles deep into his mouth. He dipped down quickly and bit into my right pectoral muscle—he tried, anyway. He’d sandwiched my nipple between his teeth and the chain mail, and was applying enough pressure and shaking his head hard enough that I was afraid he was going to rip it clean off. I wasn’t in direct danger of the bite, but if he managed to tear my sensitive nubbin off, his drool could still seep through the cloth and past the small ringlets.

  I’d never considered the male nipple as an erogenous zone; never felt it was sensitive enough. That was before I had someone trying to violently pinch it free from my chest. Now it felt like he was holding a stun gun full blast to my entire torso. It was a paralyzing pain, one that left little thought for anything other than ridding the inflictor from the area. I was thumping my fists on the top of his head—about as effective as shooing Ben-Ben from the kitchen when there’s bacon. My flailing hands were reaching for anything; a bayonet would have been preferable, instead, I got a spent magazine which I repeatedly brought down on him. My hand throbbed from the pain of holding it in place as I did my best to drive the metal box into his skull. I’d broke through the matted hair and scraped skin away to reveal the white of his skull, blood pooled and covered the bone quickly enough, and still, he did not yield his prize. The metal was a solid dented mass, and it became more difficult to keep a tight grasp as my weapon was coated in gore, and still, I hammered away. His skull began to crack, but it was more like the impact of a pebble starring a windshield than an omelet-making egg-type crack. The jolts must have finally been having an impact; he didn’t let go, but the pressure eased, and the violent shaking of his head subsided. But, not enough. It was like his jaw had locked on. I now had both hands capped over the top of the magazine and was slamming it down with as much height and torque as I could muster.

  Then, at last, I broke through. The zombie bit down his hardest yet, right before his jaws opened up and I was able to shove him off and away. My body was still rippling with the heavy undercurrent of pain. I was doing my best to push it aside, keep the tears from spilling, but anyone that has ever dealt with an all-encompassing pain knows just how difficult that can be. I looked over to BT, who did not have the time to commiserate. He’d just finished acquainting one of his attackers with the buttstock of his weapon. The gate was more than halfway closed, and the tank was nowhere in sight. There were no more flying machines, and near as I could tell, no reinforcements coming in the foreseeable future. This was looking more and more like the Alamo. Eventually
, they’d avenge our deaths, but that’s a hollow promise to the ones about to die. I pulled my 1911 free and was moving quickly to help my friend.

  “Fucking help me, Talbot!” BT bellowed. I kicked the back of the knee of the zombie he was directly engaged with, and when it fell backward, I placed a large slug directly into its eye, hammering it into the ground like a railroad spike. BT was able to partially free his rifle up and shoot the next zombie in the chest, and in one of the most random things I’d ever seen a bullet do, it exited the top of the zombie’s skull like an Apollo mission rocket, replete with ejecta. BT and I shared a brief moment of amazement at what we’d just witnessed before we moved on to the third and final attacker. By this time, BT was able to take care of it on his own. I was moving on to the zombies that were keeping the gates from closing. Advancing with my pistol extended out in front of me and firing as I did so, the heavy slug was ripping the zombies up, and I was fine with that.

  Somewhere off in the distance, a siren wailed. I didn’t know if somewhere else on the base was under attack and falling, or it was a rallying cry to help those of us here doing our best to keep the enemy at bay. The 1911 was an excellent weapon; the only problem with it was that the bullet-holding magazine didn’t carry an unlimited supply. The more I moved toward the enemy, the further I got from those who could help me. I don’t know if it was a hero complex or simply the inability to reason out the consequences of my actions, maybe it was something better left to the experts to figure out, or history to decide. BT was either having the same issues or he was trying to repay me for my help, zombies to my right were suffering grievous injuries as he fired.

  “No further!” I felt like he was talking about stopping the advance of the zombies, but maybe he was telling me to stop my foolhardy maneuver. When my 1911 went dry, I was forced to drop it, a move that affected me, one that I hoped wouldn’t haunt me later. I tried to treat something that continually saved my life and the lives of those around me with the utmost respect. That’s not to say I hadn’t wielded them as clubs or lost them in times of extreme combat, but to dismissively drop one onto the ground; that was, in its own way, gut-wrenching. However, if I’d taken the time to place it back in its holster, there was a good chance I would have suffered from a more literal translation of a gut-wrenching experience. I had my rifle up and was firing, but I had no idea how many bullets were in the magazine or if I had a fresh one to replace it with once it was spent, and right now, I was halfway encircled. Sometimes, when I’d watch an action flick, I would keep a casual count of rounds fired, just so I could, in my all-knowing way, shout at the absurdity of the movie as the hero fired off a couple hundred rounds without ever reloading. Seemed like a talent I wish I’d honed for real-life experiences.

  I found myself back-peddling when I realized that I did not have an unlimited supply. Right now, I could only hope it wasn’t too late. I was firing at a half-circle of enemies, and while most were simply trying to break the line and gain entry into our home, that didn’t mean an abundance weren’t homing in on me personally, or those nearby. We were having some success in killing those that had toed the door open, but we needed to shut their egress soon. Those in the tank were on their own for the time being, but all things being considered, they were in a much better position than we were, or so I thought at the time.

  “Swords!” someone behind shouted. Without context, I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. When my bolt froze open, signifying the end of bullets, I hastily started patting my body for spare magazines. It was then I understood the meaning of that battle cry. There was a pile of steel sabers some yards to the rear, and some of the bravest men and women I would ever encounter were scooping them up. One by one, those that had run out of ammunition were arming themselves with a weapon that had lost favor sometime back in the 1800s. Better that, than abandon their posts. I was now in a full retreat, fumbling with the release for my weapon—I’d be damned if I just chucked this gun as well—if reinforcements did somehow manage to get to us, there was a good chance they’d have more ammunition. While I was appreciative of our ability to still fight, with the swords, I would dump it instantly, so that I could fight from a distance again.

  I tossed my rifle into the back of the Hummer that had brought the swords, just as BT handed a blade to me. He was wielding two of them like a Ginsu chef, if that’s a thing. Like damn near every person ever in this day and age, my experience with swords came down to me swinging a stick around when I was nine while we were playing pirates or something. I was no Errol Flynn, but thankfully, neither were the zombies. I mean, really, the fact that the only sword-hero that I could even remember was a 1930s heartthrob should be telling enough. I didn’t mean to be ungrateful, but apparently, someone had made it to the armory and the first and best thing he or she could think to grab were steel blades? I mean, what the hell? I started swinging that thing around like I was hacking my way through a jungle with a machete. I hated being this close to the enemy. It left so many deadly variables in play, and the worst thing about this scenario was that a sword thrust to the abdomen wasn’t going to do a damn thing to slow them down.

  The thing about trying to blast a sword into a person’s skull is that the bone is surprisingly resilient. You’d think it would be like trying to pierce a watermelon; it’s not. My first opponent made me realize that. I’d just got my sword up in time, the tip of the blade struck to the side of the forehead, the jarring collision reverberated up my arm, in fact, the vibration made it difficult to hold on. The problem was that instead of stirring his brains around like a dry martini, the blade skittered to the side, cutting free a swath of hair and skin, creating the bloodiest comb-over ever caught in a gust of wind as it flopped to the side. I’d dug a groove in the bone, but as far as a kill shot, I might as well have ripped a hangnail from its hand. Sure, somehow, that itty bit of skin is painful as hell, but it won’t stop you in your tracks. The twisting of its head did give me the benefit of a second or two as it adjusted its trajectory. I took advantage of the time and sliced into the side of his neck with as much power as I could wield.

  The blade sank in easily enough, then came resistance in the form of the neck muscles and spine, and then, surprisingly, I came out the other side. I’d not been expecting the guillotine effect. Can’t even begin to express how happy I was that I didn’t have time to see if its eyes were still watching me or its mouth moving, shocked, as it expected to grab hold. Its body took one more step before joining the rest of him on the ground. Ever see those old martial arts films where the hero fights thirty bad guys but they all have the good graces to wait their turn for the savage beating they are about to have administered to them? This wasn’t like that. Zombies were slamming into each other to get to me first. The only way to kill them effectively would be a sword point to the eyeball, which would be like trying to thread a needle at night during a particularly robust windstorm. BT was dangerously close. I had some concern I could become an unwitting victim to his swords, but my bigger fear was that I would somehow hit him, and even a nick to the arm would spell the end. Would the chainmail stop a blade?

  “Back! Back!” this through a megaphone or a speaker, not sure which, but turning and running now was not an option. We’d be dragged down in an instant. Someone had a machine gun, and they’d not waited for the warning to be executed. In terms of saving the base, those of us caught in the crossfire were expendable. I mean, sure, I didn’t agree with that assessment, but I wasn’t manning the trigger. Zombies to our right were suffering the brunt of the projectiles; this had an added benefit of pulling them off us, as they saw this fresh lead barrage as a major impediment to their gaining a foothold. Maybe the first mistake Dewey had made this day. It was a case of him being too focused on the forest to see the individual trees.

  BT and I, along with a few dozen other people, were slowly pulling back. We were still very much actively fighting for our lives, but as long as that machine gun kept spewing death at the rate of 65
0 rounds per minute, we were a lot safer. By this point, my sword was coated in a thick gel of congealed blood and brain matter; my hand was slick with it. My pommel was still free of the detritus, but that was only a matter of time. My right shoulder was on fire from the repetitive motions, the shuddering contact with bone, and the subsequent pulling back once I invariably got hung up on something within the zombie—even if it was only the suction caused by flesh closing over the blade. More than once, my backward pull almost caused damage to those around me as I broke free suddenly. I was fighting in a larger clearing than most. It was like my attempt at dancing…the more I did it, the more people moved away, not wanting to be associated with me. And, to be fair, they were in danger from my flailing arms and legs as I miss-stepped to every beat.

  I struck toward a zombie coming for me. It had, with super-zombie strength, managed to bite down on my blade as it entered its mouth, stopping the sword from blowing through the back of its head. If I hadn’t been an eyewitness to the event, I would have thought it an elaborate exaggeration. Then, as if this wasn’t absurd enough, it was trying to wrest the sword away from me using only its teeth. It was twisting back and forth like a dog playing tug of war over a bone. A slab of tongue the size of a deck of cards fell out the side of its now ripped open cheek. A permanent smile that the Joker would have been envious of, mocked me cruelly. The zombie, realizing it wasn’t going to win this war, reached its hands up to the blade and grabbed hold. It lost a thumb and two fingers before I kicked up and into its knee, snapping it and simultaneously locking it backward. That gave me the space I needed to make a move. I again pushed the blade forward, this time making certain we wouldn’t have a repeat performance. I crashed through four teeth, shattering them into jagged bits before my blade hit the softer upper palette and punched through. There were a few inches of relative ease as I was now in the lower part of its brain. I waited until I felt the connection to bone before I pulled back, and voila, the zombie fell over.