Dead At Last
Page 3
"This ought to be good he said” taking aim one more time. I was a little more ready for the shot this time but what happened still made me jump. The bullet had punched a hole in the cement wall across the window he had shot out. Sunlight was streaming in from both sides and an inhuman wailing could be heard. That’s when I knew we had a way to deal with the vampires. I was soon to find out one of many.
“Ok kiddo, time for you to target practice with the hunting rifle. When it gets hot take a break.”
So I shot, reloaded, shot, reloaded for ten minutes solid. I was basically clearing the road up and down the area where the van was parked. I missed quite a bit at first, but I was getting better and better by the time I noticed the gun was feeling very hot. After the last shell I opened the bolt thinking the airflow might cool it quicker.
“My turn” The big .50 caliber gun sang out its song of death and destruction up and down the area. It didn’t matter where he shot the zombies, they went down. Oftentimes they went down with one less body part, and sometimes they were just thrown back twenty feet or more as the heavy slugs tore through their dead bodies.
“Well Kiddo, I think we’ve done some good. You want to hold onto that rifle for me while we head over towards the University?”
“Sure, but it isn’t the day for the meeting is it?”
“No, but I have a feeling that all of our target practice has stirred up a hornets’ nest of zombies, and of course the group will be interested as well. They had to have heard the shooting.”
We drove the van to the center of the lot and Brice took his new rifle and a box of shells and setup there on the tripod and we waited. Almost fifteen minutes passed before we saw some of the group walking towards us. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. I put the rifle up so I could look through the scope and there! With a target in sight I clicked the safety off and getting close to squeezing the trigger when the woman looked up. Wait it wasn’t a woman, it was a girl. Mariah.
Chapter 6 – Impromptu Meeting of the minds.
“Phew. That was close.”
“What?” he asked as he came back to the edge of the truck looking down.
“The group is sneaking through all the parked cars, and I thought Mariah was a….. I almost shot her.”
“Well you’ll have to learn to figure out who is and isn’t a zombie. You’ll never know. Any one of these guys can be turned into one. You have to make sure they are still norms before they get too close. After Isobel, I don’t know who to trust anymore.”
“K..”
And that’s how the group met up that warm October afternoon. We confirmed that it was us shooting earlier and why, and then we told them about the attack on our hideaway.
“There were only two people here in the group who knew where I lived…….” Brice started…..
“What do you mean WERE?” Said Stephen, and older vet who we both knew.
“Isobel led a large group of zombies and vampires right to our front door, and she’s no longer in the group. You could say we expelled her.”
“What.. huh? She did what……. “ the murmur from the group as this bomb hit.
“So fellows, there’s only one more of you here that knows where our hideout is. If we are found again…………”
“Brice!” Stephen said “I resent that. You know damn well that I am the only other one here that’s been to your place.”
“Stephen, I know, but it’s hard to figure out who to trust now a days because most either want to eat you, suck your blood or stab you in the back because you have more food and ammo than they do.”
The crowd murmured some more when Mariah walked up to them.
“I thought we all were low on ammo. Did you find a place to stock up?”
“You could say that.”
“Well, let me know. I need more for my 30-30.”
“Hey Brice, where did you find all that ammo? You must have shot off a hundred rounds today.”
“Let’s just say until I sort some stuff out, I am going to keep that information private. Besides, haven’t you been out looking for it like we talked about last time?”
“No, you’re the only one crazy enough to go out all the time. I hear you roaring up and down the streets like you’re mad max in that jalopy of a van your sitting on.”
“Then I guess I am the only one crazy enough to keep on living.”
“Hey Brice” it was Mariah “next time you go out prospecting, can I ride along to help out? I need to resupply, and being on my own its hard.”
“You’re alone out here?” The shock In his voice was pretty evident. I guess what was unspoken between the two of us was we figured that she lived with some other survivor. Being only a couple of years older than me, and being on her own… Maybe she wasn’t so much a troll as I had thought before.
“Yeah, ever since last year when Fat Mary went missing from the group. I’m pretty sure the Vampires got her.” She said matter of factly. Wow, I never knew. I guess there isn’t much we really did know about people when we stopped to think about it. Heck, I didn’t even know the names of most of the group here.
“You got it kiddo. Hang around a minute after words so we can talk.”
“Sure.” She said as she shot me a look that was pure venom.. She might be pretty, but I still didn’t trust her.
The group mumbled and grumbled and we outlined how today worked out, and we were trying to figure out how serious some of the others were about cutting the numbers down. What we didn’t tell them was how much equipment and explosives we’d snagged from the Armory and stashed at our place.
In the end, Stephen and another guy named Jake volunteered to do daytime hunts with us. The reasoning was, they wanted in on it, but without the safety of numbers they felt it was suicide to try to do alone. With four guys everyone could keep an eye out for each other.
“I want to help too.” Mariah said softly to me. Was she really talking to me?
“Can you shoot?”
“Yeah, I learned how to right before everything went to hell and got my hunter’s safety permit. My dad was going to take me out hunting the next year.”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Brice Ok?”
“Hey Tres, I overheard. If she wants to, I don’t see why not. Hey Mariah, where are you staying now a days?”
“I move around a lot. That’s why I don’t stock up on a lot of supplies; it’s too much to move when it’s time for me to split.”
“What do you mean?”
“Somehow the vampires always find my hideouts. If I wasn’t being careful they would have gotten me a long while back. As it is I spend half my days looking for a new place to hide and how to fix it up so they can’t get in at me when it gets dark outside.”
“Do you know where you are staying tonight?”
“Sort of.”
“Hop in the van, we’ll go pick up your stuff. So far the suck heads haven’t been able to beat their way in our place.”
“Wait a sec..” I started and I got the stink eye from both of them.
Ok, I know when to shut up.
Chapter 7 – Geek Deterrent
The three companions headed down MLK Ave till we got to a small side street. Mariah indicated the directions through the dense neighbor hoods here and they all made their way to the old run down church.
“Wait here guys, ok?”
“Uh ok, do you need a hand?”
“I have to disarm the traps. Don’t want you to set them off by mistake.”
And she made her way to the side entrance. The both of us stood to the side as she made her way to the basement of the church. Then she shouted up to us that it was safe to enter. We both came in through the side door and took a right as we headed down the stairs.
In the dark stairwell I almost ran headfirst into a shotgun suspended from the ceiling. Whoa!!!! I edged away from the barrel and headed down to the bottom without any more incident.
“Mariah, whats up with the dangling sho
tgun?” I was sort of miffed.
“A geek deterrent.” She snickered
“Oh.” Taking the hint I shut up. It looked pretty good though because the double barreled shotgun had two pieces of twine setup through both triggers. One looked like it tripped when you opened the door, and the other was the stair that I came face to face with it. I guess she wasn’t such a greenhorn.
“Come on Tres, let’s get her stuff before the deadheads come a calling.”
And we ended up packing up her stuff. It was depressingly little. Three milk crates and her mountain bike. She must have been scavenging for food whenever she could, because there really wasn’t much of it there in her belongings.
“Tres, you know why I don’t like you?” She asked.
“No, but I think I’m going to find out right?”
“hahah Sort of. You never talk to me. Am I too ugly? Do I have 4 eyes? I know I am nothing to look at, but you treat me like you’d rather kiss a zombie than be in the same area as me.”
“Huh………” what the?
“You never noticed?” And suddenly I knew. I guess I started to turn deep shades of red and purple. Brice started laughing so hard that he was having a hard time watching the road and accidentally ran over a couple wondering zombies. The squishy thuds brought him back quick though.
“Um, Mariah, I never said you were ugly.”
“No, it’s how you treat me. It’s how you look at me.”
“You’re not ugly” Tres blurted out. If he wasn’t red, now he was cherry, and looking like his head was going to explode.
“You two, I don’t want you to keep playing the dating game here. It’s getting too hard to drive, and I don’t want to risk losing a headlight by running any more of these creepazoids. K?”
“The dating game? I think I am going back here for a while.”
They both laughed. A lot. Since I can’t really take a joke too well I crawled in the back and made myself comfortable. I could hear the two of them talking. Mariah seemed surprised at my age. For some reason she thought I was older than she. I guess some things made sense, but girls…?
Chapter 8 - Homecoming
Brice moved things around in our bunker the morning after we moved Mariah’s stuff inside. My cubby was gone, and instead he put my cot in the cubby where he was at.
“Girls need their own space” was all he said. It worked for me, because I still didn’t know what was going on. All of a sudden these guys were all buddy buddy, and I didn’t like it.
“Tres, Mariah, let’s talk after lunch. Tres, you go dump the trash down the side tunnel, Mariah, scare us up some grub.”
I smiled because it seemed fitting... plus the look on her face was priceless. Lunch ended up being pretty good, we had corned beef hash with some eggs that Mariah had stored at her old place.
“Where did you get these?”
“When people started disappearing, chickens started running loose from backyard farmers around the city. All I did was do a little searching in areas the deadheads don’t go into too much.”
“These are good eggs girly” Brice said.
“Now you two..” he set his plate aside and wiped his hands on the front of his shirt. “we need to talk about our hunting party. Since Mariah has decided to throw in with us, we need to take a vote about the FSG, and how much we need to be involved with them.”
“What do you mean Brice?”
“Yeah Brice, what are you talking about exactly?” Mariah Chimed in.
“Well, you heard how it was the last meeting. Folks out there are too scared to go after food, weapons or ammo. I’m worried that’s what got Isobel over to the other side and she led them to us. I’m not too worried about Stephen, but the other folks we don’t know too well…” He let the words drop off from there.
“You think they want to take what we’ve got?” You could tell Tres had his blood boiling at that point.”
“Possibly. They may come after it themselves or somehow help the others set a trap.”
“Brice, that sounds paranoid.”
“Maybe so Mariah, but I want to know how much you guys trust the others?”
“Not very much” Tres said. “I don’t know any of them other than Stephen.”
“I’ve been on my own, and there’s always somebody in the group asking about supplies and stuff. I tell them the grocery stores are open wide, but they don’t want to travel. That’s why I have my bike. I try to zip through the streets and fill the basket on back when I am running low. Sometimes I’ll just go door to door and raid what they have in the pantries there.”
“Kiddo, that’s sort of dangerous. Haven’t you run into the deadheads inside houses? That’d be a bad place to get stuck in.”
She opened up her double barrel shotgun and put in two rounds of buckshot and snapped it closed.
“It is, and it isn’t. I can’t miss if they are foolish enough to follow me, and I always know where the back door is.”
“What do you think about letting Stephen and Jake in on the hunt?”
“Let’s find out what they have for guns and ammo before we go advertising what we’ve got.” Tres Mumbled.
“That’s what I was thinking.”
And in the end, that’s how it went. But first things first… Brice showed the kids the C-4 That was in the duffels and explained how to detonator pencils worked. Fire-frag grenades were in the last bag.
Chapter – 9 - First Hunt
Since the Survivors never decided on a time and a place to meet up next for the three of them to start the hunt they went back to the college parking lot where they usually met. The 3 of them took the van, and Brice popped up on top and setup the bi-pod for the big gun. Both Tres and Mariah took up positions near the front of the van so they could use the brush guard on the front to setup their rifles.
“Let’s do this like we did the other day Tres, Let’s start knocking down the dead heads and make some noise. The back door on the van still rolled up?”
“Yeah, want some extra ammo?”
“Yeah, sling me up a case. Here take my deer rifle bud. That shotgun is only good for close up work.”
“Yup, thanks.”
“Mariah, you have your old lever gun ready?”
“Yeah, and an extra box of shells.”
“Lets light them up.”
The big boom of the .50 opened up. By the look of it Brice was shooting at the tall buildings the vamps seemed to love. Windows and aging brick blew apart from the big gun. After a few shots the groans of the zombies could be heard in between shots. Then the slapping of running feet as they saw the norms in the middle of the parking lot with no cover other than the stupid looking panel van.
The kids opened up. Both of their rifles had a distinctive noise. The .30/06 that Tres was using had a very loud crack and Mariah’s 30-30 sounded more like a shotgun. Then you could hear them working their respective actions as they cycled new rounds in and out. As they paused to reload the 2nd time Brice jumped off the roof of the van.
“Guys, things are getting lively, get your shot guns ready. I think we might have bit off more than we can chew here.”
“Huh?..........” Mariah said and then turned around.
It looked like every zombie in the area was converging from around the campus buildings and heading towards the van. There was definitely too many for the rifles to work much longer. Brice jumped in the van and was out a couple of seconds later with both .45’s strapped to his sides, a shot gun across his back and his web pouch was bulging. He sort of looked like Rambo at that moment.
“Kids, pull the door closed and lock the back door, then follow in my wake, be quick!”
It didn’t take a whole long time for them to get it locked and they were off like a shot after Brice. Instead of running away from the mob Brice was running towards them on an angle. Both colts were booming out their song. Tres reloaded his shotgun with the Fletchette rounds and started taking shots whenever the zombies made it too close.
That’s about when Mariah started in with her own double barrel. The buckshot was devastating, but those Fletchette rounds were slightly worse. Brice pulled a Firefrag out of his web belt and pulled the pin lobbing it behind the remaining of the large group of dead heads.
“everybody down now!”
We hit the dirt just as the grenade went off and jumped back up reloading our shotguns as fast as we could. The smoke cleared a little bit and suddenly there weren’t any deadheads left standing. Just some here and there trying to pull themselves out of the pile of dead bodies.
Slinging the shotgun over his shoulder, Brice put in two fresh clips for his colts and started walking up and down the line putting a bullet in the head of anything still moving. It was a little bit gross to see so many random body parts scattered from the grenade.