by R. J. Spears
Quietly I said, “I don’t know how you find comfort in those words. I can only think that God got the hell of out of Dodge. You’ve got to get with the program. We’re on our own.”
“But...” she said.
“There’s no time for a theological debate,” I said taking one of her hands and squeezing it gently. “We’ve got to keep moving.”
The depth of the questions in her eyes overwhelmed me, but she must have answered them
. She squeezed my hand back and gave me the smallest of smiles. Together, we turned towards the door. Pushing it open, we entered the stairwell and readied ourselves to meet whatever was out there -- together.
CHAPTER 30
Showdown
The back exit of the school was the best of two bad choices. But when the first choice is wandering into a throng of ravenous zombies, you take the next worst choice. If we had known how bad that choice would be, we might have taken door number one.
Mike had been right to direct us down this stairwell. There weren’t any undead in the hallways on this side of the building. We made good time as we back tracked through the corridors, only getting turned around once. We finally made our way back to the corridor that led to the back exit where we had entered just a few hours earlier.
We were fifteen feet down the fifty foot corridor when a zombie appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the moonlight. Or what I thought it was a zombie. The problem was this zombie had a gun. The silhouette brought up its gun and started firing. Bullets ricocheted off the walls and past me. I hit the deck and Kara started backing up.
“Shoot,” I yelled back at her.
She brought up her rifle and started to fire, but stopped when the silhouette spoke.
“I wouldn’t do that,” the silhouette said. “If you fire that gun I’ll shoot your man here.”
I motioned with my hand for Kara to back-up. She hesitated, but then complied, backing up slowly.
“Drop the rifle, or else I’ll kill him.” I finally recognized the voice. It was Kurtz, the commander of the army that had assaulted our church. Things must have gone decidedly bad in the streets for him to be standing at the door alone.
“Don’t listen to him,” I said. “You drop that gun and we’re both dead. Get back to the church on your own.”
“Brave words, asshole,” Kurtz said, walking down the corridor with his gun trained on me.
“Like you guys are brave,” I said. “Attacking a group of innocent people in a church.”
“Not so innocent that you don’t have a shitload of guns.”
“Well, you sort of made our point. We need to protect ourselves from mercenary assholes like you.”
Kara reached the junction in the hallway and pulled back around the corner, her rifle still trained on Kurtz. He looked like a giant from my place on the floor, but was really around six four. His arms were beefy and his legs looked like telephone poles. There were several tears in his camouflaged army fatigues, but none of them looked like bite marks.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Kurtz shouted down the hall in Kara’s direction. “You’re thinking you’re going to take me out with a shot before I plug your man here. Are you that good of a shot? Really?”
“She sure as shit is,” I said.
“Ahhh, a lady. Sorry, ma’am. Are you willing to take that risk with your man’s life here?” He was standing only five feet from me, the barrel of his pistol looking like a cannon pointed at my head.
“She’s a crack shot. She’s taken out zombies from a hundred yards.”
He laughed. “A regular Annie Oakley, huh. Maybe you are. But what if I took you out of the picture, little missy?” In the dark, I hadn’t seen what he was doing with his other hand, but I caught a sudden movement as he tossed something down the corridor towards Kara. It hit the floor with a heavy metallic thud and rolled toward Kara.
We had waited too long and he took full advantage of it.
“Run!” I yelled.
And she did, but I wasn’t sure she had enough time. I started to get up when Kurtz whipped the barrel of the pistol across the side of my head, dropping me back to the floor. My head swam back toward unconsciousness and I felt warm liquid ooze down the side of my head and pool at my shirt collar.
The grenade went off, the explosion booming off the walls of the tight corridor, echoing into the bowels the school. My ears ached from the sound, but the soldier seemed unaffected.
“How about another one for good measure,” he said standing and tossing another grenade down the hall. As it rolled into the darkness, he grabbed me by the scruff of my neck, and dragged me back down the corridor towards the back door as easily as he would carry a sack of potatoes. We reached the exterior door when the second grenade went off. He yanked me hard out the threshold of the door and into the parking lot as the concussion of the explosion reached us. I felt inches of skin come off the side of my head as I slid me across the parking lot head first, ending up a crumpled mass.
He must have felt charitable because he gave me 3.2 seconds before he kicked me in the side. “Get up, Dickhead, or else I shoot off one of your kneecaps and leave you for the fucking zombies.”
I knew he meant it and staggered to my feet. He poked his gun into my back so hard I thought he might push one of my kidneys out onto the asphalt.
“That’s more like it,” he said.
“Fuck you,” I said.
“And you a churchgoer,” he said with a laugh. He moved in on me, grasping me in a vice-like grip with one of his meaty hands, and lifted me off the ground without seeming to expend any effort. Once airborne, he whirled me in an about-face motion, turning me away from him and set me down none too gently. Once again he placed his pistol against my back, shoving me forward.
“Here’s how it’s going to go, Asswipe,” he said. “Since you and your people have nearly decimated my platoon and jeopardized our safety, you’re going to take me to your church and outfit me and whatever men I have left with enough guns, ammo, and provisions that we can leave this shithole of a town safely or so help me God, I’ll kill every last one of you. Got me?”
It was more of a demand than a question.
“Which is the best way back to your church?” he asked.
“There’s a hundred or more zombies back that way,” I said gesturing over my shoulder. “We’ll have to head east and work our way back. Unless you want to let me go and call it a day?”
“Lead on, Dickhead, this is your little shit hole.” He again attempted to push the barrel of his pistol through my abdomen and we moved eastward.
I thought about letting him shoot me because I didn’t want to lead him back to the church, but then I thought of Kara. If she were injured back in the school, I had to stay alive to come back to help her.
Unlike movie heroes, no brilliant escape plans came to mind. I figured I would lead him along until I got inspired or got dead.
We quickly moved across the parking lot and lucked out that none of the zombies in the area noticed us. As we moved by Holy Redeemer church I looked over my shoulder at our church and saw a large mass of zombies in the street. Unlike in the past, when they were solely focused on the church, they now seemed to be churning in different directions unable to fix on a single target. In reflection, that may have been what kept our people alive as long as it did. The zombies had more than one food source and deciding which one to have as an appetizer was taxing their mushy brains.
Gunfire came from both the church and from the high school. My guess was that any of the surviving soldiers must have pulled back into the first floor of the school and set-up some sort of base. I didn’t like their chances because of what we had just experienced, but frankly didn’t give a shit if zombies ate every last one of their asses.
Deciding to take my man further down the street, we took a wide arc around the surrounding of the church and school. We were just about to head south down Offnere Street when there were a series of small explosions back towa
rds the high school.
“How long has your group been at the church?” he asked.
I didn’t want to give him any intell, but he tapped me on the back of the head with the barrel of his gun setting off another light show inside my head.
“Since the Outbreak,” I said.
“How did you pick that place?”
I didn’t like the idea of answering but liked the idea of being whacked with the gun again even less. “Most attended there. Some came in from the community.”
“So, a bunch of believers.”
“More or less.” I took a right at 4th Street and headed west.
“So, if you guys are believers, why didn’t your group just give us what we wanted?” He was trying to goad me.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there, but I’d say it’s because we’ve seen your types before, and it didn’t turn out well for us.”
“What do you mean, our type?”
“Mercenary assholes who take things by force.”
He gave my shoulder a hard wrap with the barrel and I felt an electric pain shoot down my arm.
“Watch it,” he said.
We were silent for the next two blocks. The gunshots dwindled as we moved along and it concerned me, but I decided to put that out of my head until I had to deal with it. That is if I lived long enough.
My immediate plan was to take us by the open field where the old Grant Middle School use to be and head north behind the houses on Waller before making our way to the back of the church. The houses would provide cover and put us on a parallel with the church. Once we made it to 5th Street, I’d have a better idea of what to do next.
We had only made it behind the second house north of 4th when two zombies came at us from the backyard. When he spotted them, he grabbed my shoulder and said, “Hold up.”
“You shoot them and you could bring a lot more down on us,” I said.
“Like what in the hell am I going to do, kick them to death?” he asked then quickly fired his gun past me taking the zombies out.
“See, easy peasy.”
I stood for a moment waiting to see if his shots brought any more undead our way, but none came. I could only guess that the mob of zombies were placing their sole focus on the church and the soldiers in the high school. He nudged me in the back, and I started forward. I decided to take us out onto Waller, edging between two of the houses. We held up just after we made it past the front of the house. A thick haze of smoke drifted down the street from the house that had burned earlier cutting visibility, but maybe that could work for us.
There was a renewed set of gunshots coming from the church, but I couldn’t tell if it was people firing on people or people firing on zombies. Most of the action was out in front.
“There’s a narrow street that leads up to the church,” I said. “There’s a lot of little houses that we could use for cover.”
“Just don’t try to lead me into any traps,” he said.
“I hope you don’t take me leading you into a whole shitload of zombies as a trap.”
“You know what I mean, Asshole. If I see one of your people aiming a gun at me, I’ll shoot you first.”
“Well, I think they have their hands tied up staying alive right now.”
“Don’t get smart with me,” he said shoving me forward.
Some instinct in me made me duck down as I ran across the street with my captor behind me. I led us between two houses, down a narrow driveway past another house, and into the backyard where we discovered three dead zombies. One had been torn apart, looking more like a mass of blood and gore that anything human with the exception of a single pink slipper, dangling off a blood soaked foot. The other two were chewed up pretty badly by what looked like machine gun fire. Someone had forgotten the secret to taking out zombies was the headshot.
Roosevelt Street is more of an alley than a street, but served as an access way to seven tiny houses on the west side of the street, none of them more than a thousand square feet in size. It led to the parking lot directly behind the church. I moved cautiously up the street through the smoky haze and stopped when I came to the back of a car, my feet kicking tiny metallic objects that turned out to be shell casings. The soldiers must have set-up an attack from the alley.
I knew the warrior’s game plan for this type of attack. It was to station snipers on the roof to take out anyone approaching the church from any angle. I only hoped if they were still up there they didn’t blow my head off.
I started to move around the car, but I tripped on something and I fell to my hands and knees. When I turned to see what it was, I saw a soldier with most of top of his head missing. The snipers had been busy.
“That’s one of my men,” Kurtz hissed. “Hal King, I think.” He looked down at the man for several seconds, his face contorted with a simmering rage.
I wanted to say something like, “That’s what you get for being mercenary bastards,” but thought better of it.
He looked down at me and there was something in his eyes that told me that, most likely, my time on earth was limited to minutes, maybe seconds.
He yanked me to my feet, gave me another sharp poke me with the barrel again and said, “Move.”
We only had three more houses to pass and then we’d be in the church’s parking lot. I jogged us across the alley to give us a last bit of cover. We made it past the first house when we came upon two more bodies. It was a soldier caught in the deadly embrace of a large male zombie. The zombie had most of its head missing, but the soldier was dead too. A neat bullet hole in his temple. There were several nasty bite marks on the soldier’s neck and shoulder. Like many people who were bitten, I could only surmise that he decided he didn’t want to return as one of these undead fuckers.
“Son of a bitch, that’s my second in command,” Kurtz said, some of his earlier confident malevolence receding, replaced by a haunted, lost look.
He grabbed a handful of my hair, which hurt like hell, and pulled me backwards. “What’s the best way in?” he whispered.
“All the back doors will be locked,” I said rubbing my scalp.
“What about going that way?” he asked, pointing the barrel of his gun to the east side of the church.
“That would put us more out in the open. What I last saw there was a whole mess of zombies.”
He grabbed me again and pulled me close, face-to-face, “You better not be fucking with me. I want in there and you had better not lead me into a fucking trap.” Most of his over-heated anger returned with a vengeance.
I nodded. “There’s an entrance on the west side of the church. We had it locked down pretty tight, but I know how to unlock it.”
“Okay,” he said. “No tricks. If you see any of your church buddies and warn them in any way, then I’ll blow a hole in you and kill them, too. Got it?”
Again, I just nodded. He grabbed my shoulder and spun me around in the direction of the church, but kept a hand on my shoulder as he pushed me forward. I had the distinct feeling that if I strayed more than a step away from him he’d shoot me in the back.
The west parking lot wasn’t all that large, holding about twenty cars, but there were only five SUVs and a two church vans there. We wouldn’t have much cover. If the snipers were still in business, this is where we’d probably be taken out.
Between the tingling target on my back from Kurtz’s gun, and the multiple targets I felt on the front of my body, I felt like the a buck caught in the open on the first day of deer hunting season.
We used the church to block us from the view of the swarm on the street as we pushed away from the relative safety of the alley and into parking lot. We moved in a near duck walk and made it to the first SUV without being shot. Thank God for small miracles. While it was great to have not been taken out by a sniper, it concerned me greatly that no one was watching the lot from above. That didn’t bode well for my friends inside the church.
We cautiously weaved between the other vehicles. We got next to a
minivan and I squatted while he surveyed the entryway.
“Shit,” he said. “I count five or six of those undead assholes outside the door.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“How long will it take you to open the door?”
“Fifteen, maybe twenty seconds.”
“Okay. I’m the only one with a gun. So, if you try to take me out, those things will be having you for breakfast. It’s best if you concentrate on getting us inside and I hold them off. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said knowing what he said was true. I had no tricks up my sleeve.
He pulled me forward again and said, “Let’s go, Hoss.”
We made a dash for the church and clung to the west wall like it was some sacred security blanket. The shadows kept us hidden until we had to move around a van that was wedged up against the side the building. That’s when the first zombie spotted us and started in our direction.
Kurtz moved past me, arm extended and shot the thing in the head. The others around the door reacted to the shot and jerked their attention our way. That gunshot was a signal to them that food had arrived -- this time it came as a delivery. Kurtz moved forward, shooting deliberately, making each shot count. Four of the zombies fell in succession, but the slide went back on his gun. He stopped to reload. I wondered how many bullets he had left.
Chapter 31
On the Inside
As he reloaded, I saw there was the smallest of window of opportunity for me to run. Two things stopped me; one was the fact that Kara may need me to get her back at the school if she was hurt and the second was three zombies coming around the corner at the front of the church. That cut off my escape route.
“We’ve got trouble coming around from the front,” I said.
“Shit,” he said, shooting the last zombie near the door.
