by Steven Pajak
Turning to me again, still holding Brian’s hand, Sam asked, “And you knew about this?”
“He wanted to tell you, everyone, but I wouldn’t let him,” I said. “I thought it would divide us, but we needed to be whole to survive what came next.”
“The war you created,” Phil said.
Brian shook his head. His anger had left him as suddenly as it flared up. “It was only a matter of time before Senior came for us. We defied him. If word got out that we stood against him, others might have done the same.”
Taking another cigarette and lighting it, he said, “We were a threat to him and sooner or later, he would have dealt with us. What we did was a preemptive strike. We just landed the first blow.”
Suddenly an explosion sounded, reverberating through the trailer walls, rattling within my bones.
For what sin were we now being punished? I thought briefly before the second explosion made Sam cry out and all hell broke loose.
Chapter 5
One
The metal frame of the trailer trembled and I felt the vibrations of the explosion in the heels of my feet before the tremendous sound of the explosion even reached my ears. A moment later, a secondary explosion sounded, less percussive than the first, but still audible within the trailer.
Sam cried out just as the door boomed open and Randy stood in the opening, framed in the maw with the sun at his back.
“We’re under attack!” he shouted. “I think they’ve breached the west wall!”
“Mount a defense! Hold them and push them back,” Phil said, breaking his paralysis. To Sam he said, “Get your people to form up in case they break through the inner gates. I will take a group and try to flank.”
Sam grabbed his arm and stayed him before he took more than a step. “This is over,” she said. “What happened here, right now, give me your word this ends here.”
“It’s done,” he said, without hesitation. “Now let’s move.” He pulled away from Sam’s grip and exited the trailer.
Turning to both of us now, Sam said, “Kat can never know about this. Promise me this stays between us.”
“I promise,” I said.
“She’ll never know,” Brian said.
Out of the trailer and into the street, we caught up with Phil and followed him toward the gates. A squad-size group ran past us moving to the northeast. Over the wall, I could see the bright orange flames licking toward the sky. Thick smoke billowed over the walls, black and gray, smothering the skyline. A breeze took up pushing to the north, thankfully, away from us.
From the towers the men and woman fired their rifles down into the street outside the walls. Phil stopped, turned his face up and shouted for the woman, Crystal, to give him a situation report. She paused a moment to look down at him. Her cheeks were bright red and her breathing was heavy.
“We’ve got a truck broke through the barrier, looks like it was loaded with infected. They’re all over the place, running like god damn ants.” She turned back and fired her weapon again, three or four times in rapid succession before her rifle was empty.
As she reloaded, Phil shouted, “Infected don’t shoot! Who’s returning fire?”
“There’s people out there, too,” Crystal shouted as she slammed in a magazine and took aim. “They’re running among the dead, for the love of God!”
“Our people?”
“Some ours and some that came with the infected. Get some people out there now before it all falls apart Phillip!” She continued to fire the rifle, aiming down the sight and firing at will.
On the move again, we stopped at the command post where a group of men and women were engaged in conversation. Phil touched a tall man’s shoulder, turning him around. “Don, what’s the situation?”
“We have a major breach. Infected and people, Phil. They’re lighting us up all along the west wall.”
“Where the hell is Kat? I need her.”
The man gestured toward the gate. “She’s out there. She and first squad were on watch for the folks working the field. I don’t know what happened to them out there or if they’re even still alive. We have squads two and three on the north walls. Sam just took a squad to try to flank, but we can’t get them through.”
“We’ll get through,” I said.
The man looked at me for a moment and then Brian said, “Get some more shooters up on the towers to give suppressing fire. They have the best vantage point up there and they can help control enemy movement on our flanks.”
“It’s hard to see out there with all that smoke,” Don said. “How are they going to know who are the friendlies?”
“We have to take that risk. We also need someone up there directing ground operations. We’re going to be blind out there,” I said. “Even though it’s not ideal, the folks on the tower will have a better view than those on the ground.”
“Don, can you handle that?” Phil asked.
“I can direct our fire but we don’t have communication capabilities so I won’t be able to direct your ground movements. You guys are on your own out there but I’ll keep them off your flanks as best we can though.”
Phil nodded. “We need Sam’s group on scaffolds at the walls to cover our retreat once we break through and reach Kat so make sure she gets word. No one else outside the walls no matter what, Don.”
Donald nodded his head.
“We need weapons,” Brian said.
Phil led us to a table on which our weapons lay. I snatched up my gun belt and rifle and Brian did the same. There was not extra ammo and I did not see my shoulder bag. We’d have to make do with what we had.
“All right, let’s move then,” Phil shouted.
We approached the wall closest to the explosion. The scaffolding allowed us to peer over the fence. Men and women unfamiliar to me were firing down into the street. From where I stood, I saw the large box truck that had rammed one of the containers at full speed, dislodging the container, knocking it aside. The truck and turned on its side and slid twenty or more feet into the safe zone before coming to a stop. The engine compartment was on fire and infected were still stumbling and crawling their way out from the vehicle, many of them on fire.
Fuel bombs sailed over the containers and exploded in the street. As we watched, a woman and man caught fire and rolled on the ground trying to put themselves out. Suddenly, heavy machinegun fire strafed the wall.
“Get down,” I shouted and we all dropped down off the wall to avoid being hit. When the machine gun moved away, we peered over the wall again and through the thick smoke we saw the bodies begin to filter in through the gap. At first, I thought they were more infected, but one of them ignited a flamethrower and aimed it at a group of infected that were stuck under the truck, which had pinned them when it fell on its side. Then he turned the flame toward us on the wall, driving us all once again from our perch.
“Holy Christ,” Phil said. “They’re burning everyone and everything.”
“Kat’s out there,” I said. I grabbed Phil by his collar and pulled him close so I could be heard over the din. “We need to get out there. There has to be another way!”
He nodded his head and motioned back over his shoulder. He led us to the northeast corner of the fence, furthest away from the action. It was the best point to insert, out of the line of fire. Along the wall the three foot high scaffolding provided a firm platform for those within the walls to fire down over into the streets and easily fall back to cover upon return fire. I wish it were something I thought of many months ago, when we were at war with Providence; things might have worked out differently.
Phil hopped up onto the scaffolding and without pause, leapt and pulled himself up onto the top of the wall. Without looking back, he dropped down, disappearing from sight.
“You first,” Brian said as we reached the scaffold. “Do you need a boost?”
“No, I got this,” I said. I slung the rifle over my shoulder and jumped up onto the wall, slid around on my belly until my hips a
nd legs were hanging over the other side of the wall, and then slid backward, dropping several feet to the cold ground.
Phil crouched behind an abandoned car peering over the hood. I joined him and within seconds, I felt Brian’s hand on my shoulder as he took a knee beside me. For a moment, the three of us looked on, no doubt remembering the battle between our two communities. Then, we had been on opposite sides, but in the same world of shit.
Smoke, noise, confusion, action. Hard to see ten feet in front of you due to thick smoke. Gunshots continued to ring out and ricochet off the maze of vehicles or skidding across the blacktop. A pair of crazies appeared out of thick billow of smoke just in front of us. As we rose, ready to move, several more appeared out of the smoke, searching frantically for human flesh.
“Let’s move,” Brian said, running out from behind the vehicle to engage the walking corpses. Phil and I followed right behind; Phil falling off to the left flank and I took middle ground.
Reaching down on my left, I pulled the machete from its sheath as I also drew the 1911 from its holster with my right hand. Running at the first creature in my path, I slashed at its neck with the blade and continued past it, not looking back to see if it was dead. The meaty thud of its decaying body impacting against the blacktop told me all I needed to know.
Slightly to my right, I engaged a second creature, slamming the machete at a downward arch, cleaving its skull. It stopped for a moment, its hands grasping at my clothes. I raised the 1911 to its eye and pulled the trigger, splatting its fried brain into the smoky air. I pulled the machete from its head as the body fell to the ground with the impact of dead weight.
Breathing heavily, suddenly excited by the rush of adrenaline and violence, I scanned my surroundings as I moved forward. Brian was still on the right, moving forward at an angle toward another abandoned vehicle where he paused a moment to take cover and get his bearings. On my left, Phil was following along the wall, walking in the slight depression where the landscape sloped into drainage culverts. As I watched, he suddenly took a knee and raised his weapon, firing it into the smoke. A second later, a body skidded to the ground. It tried to push itself up, but before it could get more than a few inches, Phil was on it, slamming the butt of his rifle against its skull, battering it until the skull burst and bore its gray matter fruit.
The sounds of battle grew intense as I continued to move forward. The stench of burning fuel and flesh thickened until it became overwhelming. I had to fight to control my gag reflex to keep from splashing vomit all over my boots. My eyes began to tear and burn now. It was hard to keep my eyes open.
On the left, from within the community, a volley of fire continued. Crystal and Don were directing their fire down into this maze of death. I had no idea if they could track our movement or if we all just looked like the undead to them from their vantage point behind the walls in which case it was only a matter of time until someone took a bead on me. Assuming they could even see me through the smoke.
Putting aside the thought that friendly stray bullets could kill me at any time, I pushed on. Somewhere ahead, Kat. I needed to get to her, pull her from this hell in which I had abandoned her months before. Visibility diminished further as a breeze swept a blanket of gray-black smoke eastward. Panic gripped me for a second when I realized I could no longer see Brian or Phil. I called out for my brother, but the sound of gunfire, the blast of the flamethrower, and screams of the wounded and dying overpowered my voice.
Skirting the fender of an overturned hatchback, I stepped on someone’s leg and fell back against the vehicle. A dead crazy lay with its face blown in half by a round from someone’s rifle. Next to the dead creature, a dark haired woman, the right side of her face and hair scorched.
I was a stranger to her, yet she looked at me with her left eye, pleading for help. The blacked fingers of her right hand twitched as if she was reaching out to me. Perhaps there was some comfort in dying with a stranger than in dying alone.
Softly, I touched her hand. “I’ll come back for you,” I said. Before I could tell her another lie, she silently passed. Her left eye glazed over, staring up into the blacked sky.
I moved on, hoping that Kat was still alive out there. It grew increasingly difficult to step without my foot landing on a dead person’s torso or dying person’s appendage. I couldn’t help but wonder if one of those corpses belonged to Kat. I quickly shoved away that thought.
The dead and dying seemed concentrated in this area, which meant I was getting close to the center of the action. More than ten minutes seemed to have passed since I last saw Phil and my brother, but more than likely it had only been one or two, certainly no more than five.
Suddenly to my right, a firebomb exploded no more than twenty feet away from where I hunkered down. Even at this distance, I could immediately feel the wave of heat wash over me, chapping the skin on the right side of my face. Screams of pain and horror told me that people, not crazies, were scorched.
Moving again, I went toward the screams. The heavy sounds of the machine gun suddenly fell silent—either reloading or silenced by a someone’s bullet to the operator’s head—and for the first time I noted that I could no longer hear the swoosh sound of the flamethrower being ignited. As I drew closer to the ball of fire, I realized why.
The man or woman—I could not tell which—spun in the center of the fireball, arms wildly beating its face, head, and body, trying to put out the flames that completely engulfed. The tank strapped to his or her back had exploded, no doubt pumping shrapnel and molten pieces of metal into the vital organs.
Down on my right knee, my left raised to provide a platform for my elbow, I took a bead on the dancing pyro and fired two rounds. The body dropped instantly to the ground. The smell of burning flesh and hair was more than I could stand and I had to purge myself. Thankfully, my stomach was empty and only a yellowish, thick phlegm came out.
I felt the intense heat of the burning flamethrower on my left side, even at this distance. Raising my arm to block my face, I got moving again, stumbled a few yards before falling onto the ground. My throat felt raw, burned by the thick billows of smoke I swallowed.
A set of hands grabbed at me and I swung blindly at my assailant. Pushing up from my hands and knees, I squinted and saw my brother. Downwind, the smoke was thinner.
“Dude, it’s me, stop swinging.”
He helped me to my feet and steadied me by holding my right arm. “Did you take out the flamethrower?” he asked.
I nodded my head, and then coughed harshly, trying to expel the putrid smoke from my lungs.
“You should have let the fucker burn,” he said.
Gulping in fresher air now that I was downwind, I asked. “Did you find Kat?”
He stared at me a moment as though he had no idea what I’d said and then, as if in a daze, he shook his head. Although his face betrayed his words, he tried to sound optimistic when he said, “Maybe Phil found her.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Not since we split up. Let’s move,” Brian said.
On his six, I followed him back into the smoke and flames. The battlefield was suddenly too quiet. I realized I had not heard a gunshot in more than a minute, maybe longer. Now, the only sounds were those of the wounded and dying. And the living dead, most of which lay burning or charred on the blackened road.
We killed a few of the crazies and we moved across the road toward where we last saw Phil. Suddenly, Brian stopped. We stood at the point of impact, where the truck had rammed its way into our safe zone. Here, the concentrated dead formed a semi-circle around where the machine gunner must have set up. Scores of ejected cartridges littered the pavement. The machine gunner, though, was gone.
Phil found us a few minutes later and told us that a small group had retreated right after the flamethrower blew. They pulled some wounded from the field, one of them he thought was Kat, but he was not sure. None of those who were reportedly with Kat were accounted for, either. The only way to know
for sure was to put out the fires and check all of the dead and wounded to account for our missing or dead.
After more than an hour, Phil’s people reported back and it was not good news. The five men and women in Kat’s patrol were all deceased. There was no sign of Kat’s body, however. They also found two men and one woman alive who were not part of Randall Oaks or Providence.
“What’s their status?” Brian asked. He was sitting at a table with a bowl of water, washing soot from his face.
Phil said, “One of the men died before we could get them inside. The second man sustained serious injuries, including bites. I have him isolated in one of the trailers.”
“And the woman?” Brian asked.
“She’s in triage waiting for Ravi to look her over. From what my people say, she’s got a broken leg, probably bruised or broken ribs. She’s in a lot of pain, but she’ll live.”
“What do you think?” Brian asked me. He finished washing up and was now patting his face dry with an old T-shirt. “Time’s wasting and we need answers.”
I nodded my head slowly and then pushed up from the floor where I’d been sitting. My eyes and throat burned something fierce and my body was tired. But my brother was right, time was wasting and every minute that passed, the odds of getting Kat back alive continued to shrink.
“Okay, you two take the guy,” I said. Before my brother could protest, I continued, “Get what you can before he turns. Maybe if he knows he’s dying he might talk. If he doesn’t, press him hard. Make him wish he was dead.”
“Oh I got this, brother,” Brian said, a bit too enthusiastically. He grabbed the bowl with the water and turned to Phil. “You have the stomach for this?”
Phil’s eyes shifted to me a moment, then back to Brian. He took the bowl of water from Brian’s hands. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get Kat back. Don’t worry about me.”
I saw truth in his eyes and I believed him. And with that, I left them to get down to their business. Besides, I had my own matters to attend and time was slipping.
