Books of the Dead (Book 1): Sanctuary From The Dead

by R. J. Spears

  She closed on me and just as her fingers were only inches from my face, Mike shouldered me out of the way knocking me to the ground, and clubbed her in the face with the stock of his gun. She went down hard, her nose broken with pieces of the bone sticking through her skin, but she got to all fours and scrambled for us.

  Kara moved in front of me and knelt there blocking my view, taking my face in both her hands. “Don’t watch, Joel. Just close your eyes.” I blinked at her. “Close your eyes, Joel.” The thing that used to be my mother got back to its feet and Mike closed on her. I saw him raise his rifle again and that’s when I closed my eyes. The next few seconds lasted a decade as I heard Mike’s grunts of exertion and the sound of his stock striking flesh and bone repeatedly. Then it was over.

  “Get him up,” Mike said. “We need to get moving.”

  I felt Kara’s hand on mine. “Joel, we have to go.” My eyes were still closed. “You don’t have to open your eyes. I’ll help you up.” I felt a gentle tug on my hand and I complied, getting to my feet, keeping my eyes tightly shut. She pulled me along for what seemed to be a block, but I kept my eyes closed the entire time.

  “You can open your eyes now,” Kara said.

  I started to turned back to look, but she squeezed my hand. “Don’t.”

  “Okay,” I said looking into her sad eyes.

  CHAPTER 26

  Siege

  The boom of the marauder’s big gun made both of us jump. Mike motioned for us to follow him past the Catholic Pre-School and towards the back of Holy Redeemer Church. We heard small arms fire as we made our way around the side of the church. As we reached a corner Mike held up his hand, motioning for us to wait as he peeked around it.

  He turned to us and said, “From what I can see, they have a jeep and Humvee in front of the high school. They have some men up on the second floor firing on the church. I can’t see the big gun, but I’d bet it’s by the football field or the auditorium.”

  “What about the church?” Kara asked.

  “It’s still there,” he said. “I see some return fire from the roof.”

  “What’s the plan?” I asked my mind caught halfway between the fact that my mom was lying dead back in the street and the impending firefight.

  “We need to make our way to the back of the high school and see if we can get in. If we can get behind these bastards then we might be able to do some real damage and give the people in the church a chance.”

  He must have seen something in my eyes. “Joel, I know what just happened has freaked you out. It would do the same for me, but you have to snap out of it. We need all of you here and focused. Okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said but I knew I sounded shaky. “I’m here. All the way.”

  “Good, because we need you.”

  “What about the zombies?” Kara asked.

  He looked around the corner and turned back to us. “There’s maybe twenty between us and the back of the school. Most of them are moving toward the marauders, but there are still more coming.”

  He was right. When I surveyed the streets behind us, I could see zombies streaming in a steady flow towards the sounds of the battle, shambling along in twos and threes. I had often wondered how many were left in town, and I was getting my answer. A whole hell of a lot. It was becoming quite clear that we would have two groups to battle. The only thing we had on our side was that the zombies didn’t care who they ate, so they could be allies as well as enemies. I just hoped they put the fucking soldiers at the top of their menu tonight.

  “This isn’t going to get any easier. We need to try to make the run without firing a weapon, that way we will still have the element of surprise. But don’t get yourself bitten before using your gun. Okay?” Mike asked.

  We both nodded. He led the charge. I had my bat out as we started running toward the back of the high school. A zombie intent on the sounds of firefight shambled ahead of us completely unaware of our approach. Something in me boiled as I approached it. I took a pre-emptive swing on it, putting all I had into it and taking a perverse joy in it. The back of the thing’s skull caved in under the impact and it collapsed to the pavement. What was left of its head was an oozing bloody mess.

  The next one turned when it heard its dead comrade go down. Mike smacked it in the face with the stock of his gun and it joined the other one in a place where zombie souls go. Two down, countless more to go.

  There was space between these first two and the small group ambling in the parking lot behind the school. Mike issued a series of hand signals to direct our attention to an open door in the back of the school.

  Seemingly out of nowhere, a large zombie wearing a high school varsity jacket came around the back of the car we were behind. The thing was as massive as a truck. Undaunted, Kara jumped up, holding the rifle by the barrel and swung with all she could muster, striking the thing across the side of the head, cracking its jaw, and smashing in an eye socket. The cracking of bone sounded like wood splitting. It tottered along for a couple feet and fell forward onto the pavement. It lay there for a moment and started to rise, struggling like a drunkard. Mike moved quickly by Kara, brandishing a large hunting knife, and jumped on the creature’s back driving the blade into the base of the thing’s head and up into its skull. It jerked it around, arms beating the pavement, as Mike scrambled what was left of the thing’s brain. There was a look in Mike’s eyes, something dangerous, yet lost. Losing Logan had taken a toll on him, and I feared he was drifting away from whatever tentative hold he had on sanity. I wasn’t sure I was that far behind him.

  My spot check on our mental wellbeing ended when another undead thing lumbered around the side of the car. It was Mr. Bailey. He had been the janitor at the high school forever. He had been there when I was there and well before. There was a chance he’d be there for another hundred years. One of his legs was broken and was dragging along behind him. Something had eaten half of his face, leaving a gaping hole where his eyes should have been. I used my bat to put him down with two quick swings. My arms felt leaden after the effort. I knew it wasn’t physical fatigue that was working on me, but the soul sucking drain of seeing my mother as a zombie and knowing what Mike had done to her. It was her along with the hundreds of these damn things we had to destroy, each one of them taking a little piece of us with them.

  The movies make it look so easy -- see a zombie and shoot it. The reality is quite different. Yes, there is a chasm of separation, knowing what these things are, but you also knew these zombies were once walking around just like you. They were someone’s father, brother, sister, or even their mother. Someone had loved them and they had loved someone else. Just because they wanted to kill you didn’t remove those factors. Reality is reality and you did what you had to.

  That’s what we did.

  “Come on,” Mike said as he ran for the open door with us following. The gunshots were louder now, but softened as soon as we entered the building. I pulled it shut to keep any of those things from following.

  None of us had been in the new high school. They had torn down the ancient one I had attended several years ago and built this modern multi-purpose school in its place. The two middle schools in town had also been razed and a new combined facility had been created along including an elementary school complex. Compared to the old building I had attended this one was a regular Trump Tower, complete with air conditioning and fancy new flat screen TVs. A lot of good they did now.

  The place was a little worse for the wear. It looked like a small battle had gone on inside. School desks littered the hall, some of them smashed to pieces with others heaped in piles as makeshift barriers. A dark brown stain led down the hall as if someone had been hurt and dragged their bleeding body along.

  Mike stopped when we came to an intersection and waited for us to bunch up behind him.

  “We need to get up to the second floor,” he said, his voice quiet. “They’re probably going to have guys up there. We should take them out quietly if we can, b
ut let’s not take any risks. Shoot if you need to. Once we secure the floor we need to spread out to make them think there are more than just three of us and bring fire down on these assholes from different directions.”

  “Do we know if Greg is in position?” I asked.

  “No, but he’ll know where we are as soon as we start shooting. Let’s just hope to God he’s out there ready to bring us some back-up. Are you ready?” He asked looking at both of us.

  If I had been honest, I would have said “No,” but that wasn’t really an option, so I nodded.

  We found a back stairwell and headed up as quietly as we could. The second floor at the back of the building was empty, but as we crept forward the sound of the gunfire became increasingly louder. We moved delicately around debris and broken glass as we made our way across the span of the second floor and library.

  As we reached a corner, Mike held up a hand for us to stop. We all knelt as Mike assessed the situation.

  “It looks like there’s two groups in two different rooms on the southeast corner of the building giving them a good line of fire on the church,” Mike said softly, pointing down the hall. “I don’t think we’re going to be very quiet about this. There’s just too many of them, but they are grouped together and we can use that to our advantage. You two get back and let me watch for a minute to see if I can get a better idea of how many we’re up against. And watch our backs for the dead or the living.”

  He watched for a good five minutes before he came back, pulling us into an open classroom down the hall for a quick huddle. “There’s probably eight to ten men up here. Most of them with automatic weapons. I don’t think we should try to take them out one at a time. They could call in back-up and we would be screwed. Our best bet would be to rush the rooms. I’ll toss a grenade into one of the rooms while you cover me. We’ll shoot anyone in the second room.”

  He said all this in a matter-of-fact way like it was a daily thing for him. Yes, we had faced down small bands of marauders, but this was a heavily armed and well trained small army. Before the Outbreak, my combat experience consisted of Ghost Recon on my X-box. Still, what choice did we have? If we didn’t act, they’d most likely kill all our friends.

  Mike started to move but must have seen something in Kara’s face. “What’s up, Kara?” he asked.

  She hesitated for a moment. “I’m not sure I can do this,” she said, looking down.

  “Listen, we’re all afraid,” Mike said. I would have agreed, but I knew I didn’t have to be so blatant.

  “It’s not that. Yes, I am afraid,” she said. “But this is different. I can destroy the undead, but these people are alive. This would be murder.”

  “No, no,” Mike said. “These guys are shooting and probably killing our people right now. This is war.”

  “Why can’t we just surrender?” she asked. “They can have our stuff. It’s not ours anyway. God gave it to us, but we could just as easily let them have it.”

  “Maybe we could, but we may not get off that easy,” Mike said. “These are hardened soldiers. They have probably been moving from town-to-town taking what they want. They may not just want our stuff. They may want our people -- our women.” He stopped to let this sink in. “The old rules of society just don’t work for them anymore. If they kill and take by force like they’re doing, they’d think nothing of taking hostages and using them anyway they want. Do you understand me?”

  It took a moment, but she responded. “While the rules don’t apply for them, it doesn’t mean that they don’t apply to us.” Then she looked at me. “What do you think, Joel?”

  This was a question I didn’t want to answer, but I knew I wouldn’t be let off the hook. “Up until shooting the woman at the college a few months ago, I’d never shot anyone in my life. At least not a living person,” I said. “Before the Outbreak, killing anything was against everything I believed in, but the world is no longer the same. It’s not a place where I can hold onto those beliefs. When I saw what those marauders did to that foraging party a few months ago, I knew I had to change my own rules.”

  “But God’s rules don’t change,” she said.

  “This isn’t murder,” I said. “This is defending our people.”

  “We don’t have time for this argument,” Mike interrupted, his face suffused with red. “You’re either in or you’re out,” he said to Kara. “What about you, Joel?”

  I nodded my head, but my mouth was dry as a desert.

  “You do what you have to do,” Mike said to Kara, but his expression said something different. “You ready?” he asked me. I nodded again.

  “I’m going to throw a grenade in the first room then we both head to the second room and take out anyone who’s in there. Kara, if you can just keep anyone from coming out of that room, that will keep Joel and me alive.” He paused and held her in his gaze and she reluctantly nodded. “Joel, we’ll enter the second room, I’ll take up a firing position and you do the same. I’ll take the right side of the room, you take the left. You watch our backs to make sure we don’t have anyone box us in. Okay?”

  I nodded. Things started moving faster and faster until they stopped all together.

  Mike moved along the wall toward the closest classroom. He had his M-16 out in his left hand and a grenade in his right, ready to toss it. The gunfire from the two rooms was sporadic, but it covered any sound we made. While I wasn’t sure, I thought I heard return fire but the ratio was disproportionate with most of the shooting originating from the soldiers.

  We made it just outside the first door. Mike leaned with his back against the wall, taking just a moment to steel himself for what he was about to do. He closed his eyes for just a moment, nodded his head twice as if he were acknowledging someone, then pulled the pin on the grenade. He took a pregnant pause and then nodded his head.

  Reality shifted for me again -- just for a moment. Months ago I was in the world of the living, working a do-nothing job, making next to nothing and going nowhere and complaining bitterly about how life was treating me. Now I was in a world of the undead, standing next to a man who was getting ready to toss a grenade into a room full of men, intent on killing the only people I cared about.

  Mike had been here before, probably on his tour in Iraq during the Gulf War. He knew what was about to go down and I hadn’t the slightest fucking clue. This was a whole new experience for me, and getting my head around it was nearly impossible. It didn’t really matter, because Mike took that moment to toss the grenade into the room. We were on the move to the second room.

  I followed him into the room, seeing five men, two with their guns pointed out the window. All of the men had on olive drab uniforms and not one of them looked to be over twenty five. One of the men aimed and fired into the darkness.

  Mike made a quick step to his right and lowered himself to one knee allowing me space to enter. As I lowered myself to one knee, my foot pressed against a school desk, causing the leg to make a slight scratching noise against the floor. One of the men, standing with his back to us, turned his head and looked at me, an expression of disbelief coming over his face -- a real WTF moment. He started to swivel, trying to bring his gun to the firing position toward us.

  The grenade went off in the room next door, and someone screamed in pain.

  Mike let off a quick burst and the man turning towards us flew backward from the impact of the bullets, blood spattering the wall before he hit it. He went slack, slumping to the ground. The two men on my side of the room jerked around. I did what I had to do, my bullets caught the first one across the abdomen and the second one across the chest and neck, blood spurting forth like a geyser from the neck wound. The one with the neck wound dropped his rifle and clutched at the bullet holes as if he was trying to stop the bleeding, but it was too late. He slumped back against the wall and slid down, hitting the floor and falling onto his side, his mouth moving soundlessly. For some reason, all I could think of was a fish out of water, sucking for breath. His hand m
oved to his neck, blood pumping between his fingers. Then the fingers lost all their strength, dropping away from his seeping neck wound and the dimming light behind his eyes went out completely.

  Mike shot the last man in the room, knocking him backwards through the window, and into the black night. Mike was up and moving, giving me a light tap on the shoulder as he moved past me, telling me to follow him. He cautiously walked into the first room in a crouch, sighting down his M-16 for anything still moving. My body felt numb and insubstantial, almost something separate from my being, like a ghost as I followed him.

  The room was a wreck. Smoke from the explosion settled towards the floor revealing the carnage. Parts of school desks were cast about the room in jagged pieces. Mike reached out and pushed me lightly to the right in the direction of the wall as he moved off to the left. I hugged the wall, moving forward through the debris as Mike moved up toward the windows. The stench of the smoke almost sent me into a coughing fit.

  I saw the first body just after I entered. It was a man in an army uniform. He lay face down with half dozen shrapnel wounds in his back, blood oozing from each entry point. I became fixated on him for a few seconds, wondering who he was, wondering if he was really attacking us or was he just along for the ride?

  I looked up and Mike was almost to the front of the room. I started forward again.

  There were three more downed men at the front of the room. Another one sat in the corner with his hands to his face, blood seeping between his fingers while he moaned.

  Mike went by the other men, nudging each one of them with a foot. None of them moved.

  We converged on the man in the corner, his head jerked about as we got closer. He pulled one of his hands away from his face, but held the other there while his hand searched the floor. Just as he touched an M-16, Mike placed his foot on his fingers. The man let out a grunt and yanked his hand away.