The First Days

by Rhiannon Frater

Page 43

 

  Things were going to hell. Travis and Katie felt as if the world was toppling around them. The guards were all shouting at each other. Jenni was screaming as Mike’s voice yelled over the walkie-talkie. Juan was arguing with the Mayor. Jason was screaming, "Get my Mom down!" And the zombies were clustered on top of the one truck, trying to get to Jenni and Mike.

  "Fuck me," Travis whispered.

  "Who's a crack shot," Katie demanded, looking around at the men with the rifles.

  "I am. Through the eye every time," one man said. He was older and had a weather-beaten face.

  "Take out the zombies on the left end of the truck," Katie ordered.

  Travis looked sharply at her. "Are you sure? They are so close to falling into the spiked area. "

  "As the zombies fall back, they'll fill up the top of that ramp of dead bodies and the other zombies won't be able to scramble over them. " Katie pointed. "We might be able to eliminate that slope in the pile and make it harder for them to get up. "

  Travis studied the situation. "Yeah. I see that. And if they try to climb, they'll pull the bodies down on them. Go for it, Ed. " He nodded to the volunteer.

  Ed nodded and began to target the zombies.

  The rifle began to roar and Katie watched as the zombies began to fall backwards back into the corral. She was grasping at straws, she knew it, but they had to do something.

  "Shoot the fucking ones under us," Mike shouted into the walkie-talkie.

  "They can't reach you," Juan's voice answered over the cackling static.

  Katie ran down the stairs from the guard post and toward Juan. Jason came running toward her. "Katie, get her down!"

  "Jason, we're doing our best without compromising everyone," Katie answered, resting her hands on his shoulders for a moment.

  Jack was barking hysterically at the zombies that were still intent on getting Jenni and Mike.

  "Why don't we have grenades? Or flame throwers or something like that!" Jason's voice was high and strained.

  Katie sighed and moved on toward Juan. "Because we're not soldiers, Jason. We're just trying to survive. " She glanced toward the zombies to see that Ed, the hunter, had significantly reduced the population. But there were still maybe ten or so under Jenni and Mike. "Juan, what are we going to do?"

  Juan was studying the situation with great intensity. He lifted his walkie-talkie to his mouth. "Travis, status?"

  There was a burst of static then, "We slowed them down from getting up on the truck. They can't just walk up anymore onto the truck, they're struggling to try to get up now. Katie had a good idea, but it may not last. The more they claw at the dead, the more they slide down. But they'll be able to get back up soon if we don't hurry. "

  Juan looked at Katie, then toward the zombies. "I think we should pull Jenni and Mike back and leave them over the spikes and let those last few zombies fall into the spikes. "

  Katie winced, then nodded.

  "We need better weapons," Jason said angrily from behind Katie.

  "Yeah, we do. Know where to get any or how to make them?" Juan's voice was sharp. He turned away and began talking into the walkie-talkie, instructing the pulley operators.

  Jason threw up his hands and stalked away angrily.

  Katie sighed and looked toward Jenni and Mike. They looked so vulnerable up there. The operators on the pulleys began to tug them back in and the zombies began to leap for them. A few tumbled into the no man's land where the spikes were. Two were impaled, but two more glanced off the spikes and landed on the ground.

  Juan cursed loudly in Spanish as he motioned to the operators to stop hauling the two in.

  Another zombie made a flying leap at Jenni and his fingers glanced off her shoe, but he fell hard against the hurricane fence.

  Another three tumbled off onto spikes, but now they had some zombies up against the hurricane fence rattling it.

  "Gawd, this keeps getting worse," Katie muttered.

  Travis voice cackled again. "We have a breach. " His voice sounded overwhelmed.

  Katie looked up to see more zombies flowing onto the trucks. Because they had pulled Jenni and Mike back, the zombies were now hurtling into the spiked area. Many were impaled, but more and more were falling to the ground as they glanced off their undead companion's skewered bodies.

  "Juan, we're fucked if we don't hold that line," Katie exclaimed, and moved toward the stairs that lead up to the top of the wall.

  Travis joined her and Juan followed her as the Mayor shouted at them to do something fast.

  "Keep the guns thinning the herd at the back of the corral," Travis said.

  "We need to go in with spears," Katie said, almost over him.

  "We need to keep someone shooting the ones trying to get over the truck," Juan added.

  "Sounds like a three prong plan," Travis said.

  "Great minds…do something…" Juan said, and waved his hand at some of the construction workers who were hanging back waiting to join the fray.

  Travis grabbed hold of Katie's arm as she turned to grab a spear. "You don't have to. "

  "Yeah, I do," Katie answered. She slung her rifle over one shoulder and double-checked her revolver.

  Jenni and Mike were now dangling over the spikes, screaming to be pulled back in, but Juan motioned to them that it wasn't going to happen.

  Katie understood why. At this point Jenni and Mike were the main focus of the undead cannibals. Drawing them into the fort would just turn the zombies' attention to all of them.

  "This is crazy!" Jason's voice drew Katie's attention. "We need better weapons. We need grenades and…and…"

  Katie looked down at him and gripped the spear tightly. "Jason, we'll take care of it. "

  Travis and Katie looked down at the ladder that led to the area between the fence and the wall. A few zombies saw them and grabbed the fence and began to shake it. Katie muttered "fuck" a few times then let herself down the ladder. Her hands were shaking so badly it was hard to hold on. All that separated her from a gruesome death was a wire fence.

  Travis dropped down behind her, followed by construction worker, then another. Katie pressed herself back against the wall and stared at the crazed, rabid faces of the zombies just on the other side of the fence.

  "Katie," Travis said softly.

  "Yeah," she answered. She peeled herself off the wall and took a step forward.

  Beside her, a short Hispanic man drove his spear between the holes in the fence and into the eye of a zombie. And with that simple act of violence, the world turned bloody and surreal. Using the spears with screwdrivers at the ends, the construction workers began to thrust hard through the gaps in the fence, trying to drive the sharp ends through the eyes or mouths of the screeching zombies.

  Katie took a deep breath and gazed into the face of a female zombie screaming and growling on the other side of the fence. Her fingers, stripped of most their skin, clutched the fence tightly, and she shook it as hard as she could, trying to rip down the barrier between her and Katie. Katie lifted the spear and aimed the end at the woman's eye. As hard as she could, she thrust the spear forward and felt the sickening squish of the woman's eyeball.

  Shoving harder, the spear pressed deep into the screaming woman's head and finally into her brain.

  "Scramble it!" Travis voice was jagged with exertion as he struggled to impale an enormous zombie on the other side of the fence.

  Katie jiggled the spear around and felt the woman go limp with one harsh cry. Leaning her weight back, she drew the spear out of the now dead zombie's flesh. Blood splattered her clothes.

  "Shit. "

  "On a stick," Travis said.

  More zombies were trying to leap off the trucks onto them, but due to the foresight of Travis and Juan, the truck perimeter was a good distance from the fence and they kept landing on the spikes, or tumbling to the ground.

>   Katie felt sweat dripping off of her and she thrust the spear into the eye of another zombie. Then another. Over and over again. It was hard work-gory work-and the screaming faces made her tremble. But she kept going.

  Juan's voice sounded over the walkie-talkie. "Travis, we nearly have the corral empty. Most of the zombies are now up against the truck or down in the trenches with you. "

  Travis nodded, though Juan couldn't see him. "Then this fucking battle is almost over. "

  "Let go! Let go!" someone shouted, followed by a harsh scream.

  Katie looked to the side to see that a construction worker had been foolish enough to brace his foot against the fence to draw the spear out of his victim and two other zombies had managed to grab it. He had fallen, sideways, against the fence and now the remaining zombies were tearing bits of his flesh away with their fingers and teeth.

  Katie dropped the spear and walked over to the man. Another man was trying to wrestle him away from the zombies.

  She drew her gun.

  "No, no, just save me," the man pleaded.

  "I am," she answered, and aimed. She fired four shots, point blank, through the holes in the fence, killing the zombies who had bitten into the man.