As Max grabs hold of the man’s right arm in preparation to roll him, Vinny shouts out, “I know you two are dealing with some shit right now but if don’t hurry up then we’re going to have a lot more of it coming our way!”
The beating fist of the infected and the sound of snapping two-by-fours make Vinny’s point for him and Max quickly rolls the infected to the left and hoists Brooke to her feet.
“Run!” he yells at Brooke and she’s off before he can complete his command.
The open doorway at the end of the hall seems to be reaching for her, waiting to wrap her in its relatively safe embrace. Thankfully, the room is close and she reaches it in seconds, disappearing into its darkness. In an attempt to discourage the unseen pursuers, Vinny fires blindly into the flames at the end of the hallway. Max grabs Vinny’s good shoulder and begins guiding him backward as they cover the remaining few feet to the storage room. As soon as they’ve cleared the doorway, they begin toppling aluminum shelves and machines that they’d positioned earlier on either side of the entrance. Since the freeway-man had demolished the door to the room these shelves and equipment would provide the only barrier between they and the oncoming infected. The oxygen tanks had been relocated to the closet to keep them out of the line of fire. Gilly sat near them for the same purpose.
The fire was now licking the ceiling at the other end of the hallway but that didn’t matter. Max, Brooke and Vinny were now seamed in, with a horde of infected hungry for their blood coming full boar down the hall. They all know their chances of survival are nil.
With no time to speak Max gives a nod to Vinny and Brooke, and their eyes reflect the same sentiment as his. If they’re going to die here, then they’re taking as many of those things as possible with them.
Max lifts his rifle and begins to unload. Brooke and Vinny follow suit and try to concentrate fire on a single infected each rather than shooting wildly into the crowd. The heart and the head are the main objectives but the wildly rapid movement of the targets is not making it easy. The infected move so quickly that it’s difficult to hit them more than once in any given spot.
Max doesn’t get the results he’s after by aiming high and decides to change tactics and shoot for their knees in hopes of slowing their locomotion. This tactic yields better results and Vinny and Brooke follow his lead.
In the hall, a red head drops to one knee after Max blows out her other, but still manages to pull herself along only slightly slower than before. A fast food chain employee garbed in a red and green shirt with hat to match quickly fills her place in the front of the Hall. His left arm appears to be badly burned by grease, probably inflicted when he was first attacked and turned. For some reason the infected seemed to be fairly civil to each other -aside from the incident with the freeway-man and the boy. They apparently possessed the ability to think just like anyone else, but were driven mad by their insatiable appetites.
The biters are now at the door and the makeshift barricade offers little more than a hurdle for them. While taking multiple M4 hits to his torso the fast food employee breaks through and knocks Brooke down flat. To everyone’s amazement, he pursues her no further; instead he moves right past her en route to the closet where Gilly now lies. An ear-shattering boom fills the room and the fast food biter’s head paints the ceiling above him. The biter’s body topples to reveal Gilly sitting upright with smoking shotgun in hand. The next biter through the door takes some bullets but pushes through to Gilly only to end in a similar manner to the fast food employee.
“It’s my blood,” gurgles Gilly, “they can only smell me!”
Max considers this for a moment while continuing to fire at the girl with one knee. He and Brooke were just covered with the blood of the infected only moments ago. Vinny’s clothes were still blood stained from his earlier encounter with Lisa. Gilly was the only one in the room that didn’t smell like the infected and therefore the only one that smells like food to them.
This revelation starts the wheels turning in Max’s head, but he has to be sure. The redhead reaches the door and is through in no time.
“Don’t shoot at her just keep firing down the hall!” Max shouts to Vinny and Brooke and receives looks of confusion, but compliance of action.
Just as the biter before her, the redhead b-lines directly for Gilly who awaits her with a fresh shotgun shell in the chamber. Once more, the loud boom from its barrel fills the room and her limp body lines up next to the one before her.
“Get out;” yells Gilly, “I got this!”
He follows the statement with a flick of the safety pin on his grenade, a wink and a smile in Max’s direction. Gilly then reaches into his breast pocket and retrieves a set of keys, which he tosses to Max.
Max feels a momentary pang of appreciation and regret in his heart when he understands Gilly’s plan.
Max turns to Vinny and Brooke, “Get behind me!” he shouts.
They comply and line up single file. He then gives the hallway a quick check to make sure it’s clear.
Brooke’s eyes well up with tears as she looks gratefully at Gilly and blows him a kiss. Gilly’s smile widens and he cocks the shotgun chambering its final shell.
“Let’s do it!” exclaims Max as he scrambles over the barricade and into the hall.
Max ducks into the first room he comes to and beckons to Vinny and Brooke to do the same. As soon as they’re in he points to the blood pool on the floor from the robust biter and commences to rub more -already clotting- fluid onto his clothes. Brooke chokes back a gag and joins him, as does Vinny.
The cries of more infected charging down the hall toward Gilly make the hairs on Max’s neck stand on end and he knows it’s time to go. As soon as he hears them pass, he flies through the door with Brooke and Vinny hot on his heels. They stay low to avoid the smoke and flames and are buffeted to one side by a straggling infected on his way to dine.
‘Boom!!!’ the shotgun sounds for its final time and they all mentally brace themselves for what they know will come next.
Max makes sure Brooke and Vinny are through the hole in the lobby wall before he exits. The impromptu entrance is now a gaping archway outlined with fire. They take only seconds to get free.
Above even the cries of the infected, Gilly’s screams can be heard as they sink their teeth into his flesh. Brooke realizes that Gilly has endured this additional agony just to buy them a few moments more and again her eyes flow.
Max rounds the building and pulls out the keys that Gilly tossed to him. He locates the door key and unlocks the Hummvy on the passenger side. He jumps in and scrambles to the Driver’s seat but not before he hears one last pain-filled scream from Gilly.
***
Gilly holds out for as long as he can, as the infected feed from various parts of his anatomy. A smallish one has taken up residence in his lap and after reaching into Gilly’s abdomen has begun to twirl his lower intestines like spaghetti noodles around two fingers on his left hand. It drinks the blood and bile that pour forth from the quarter-sized hole near Gilly’s navel as he winds more and more of the organ through the opening.
They say that when death approaches, your life flashes before your eyes. This is not the case for Gilly, but what does come to mind is a particular spring day back home and so long ago that it had almost faded into a dream. He recalls the honey-sweet smell of tobacco leaves, golden bronze reaching to the fiery Sun above, the cool breeze whistling its gentle serenade through the dense woods that surrounded the fields where he lay. And later the fireflies will seemingly twinkle into existence just as the day’s light begins to ebb into blackest night. He wonders how his life had strayed so far from that day. That one perfect day when he hadn’t a care in the world, other than if there was enough pear preserves left for tonight’s biscuits, or if Sue May would glance down his path while on her way to school the next day. He longs for that day and just one more shy smile from Sue May.
Gilly’s vision starts to dim and he knows he can holdout no longer. H
e lifts the grenade to his mouth and uses his teeth to pull the pin. Gilly then releases the arming trigger and rolls the grenade closer to the oxygen tanks.
He spits the pin at the nearest biter and says, “See you fuckers later.”
The grenade erupts, filling the surrounding space with shrapnel and tearing through the oxygen tanks. In an instant, the volatile compressed oxygen reaches the flames in the hall and ignites the air throughout the clinic with a sonic boom that shatters every window and unhinges every door. Gilly –as well as all the infected around him- is vaporized in a blink, but in that blink, he has just a moment for one final thought… ‘Thank God’.
***
Brooke and Vinny are barely in the Hummvy when the shattering glass pelts the vehicle at an incredible velocity. Brooke covers her ears and screams as her eardrums flex on the verge of bursting.
The bulletproof windshield is serving as an adequate barrier to the flying debris but Max has no intention of spending any more time in front of the clinic. The Hummvy is already reversing when the fireball envelops them. Max presses the throttle to the floor and rolls over several parking bumpers and off the street curb in an effort to escape it. Everything inside the vehicle jostles and clanks as the suspension rebounds after each successive bump.
The fiery dragon from the mouth of the clinic retreats and Max, Vinny and Brooke take a moment to pause and catch their collective breath. Silently each, in their own way, says a final thank you and goodbye to Gilly.
The three look on, as the building consumes itself. Fire plumes lick the outer eves and set the roof ablaze. The ceiling of the lobby folds under the intense heat and sends sparks scattering outward as it collapses inward. A few subsidiary explosions can be heard, as other combustibles inside the clinic are -one by one- consumed by flame. With each small bomb, a cloud of black smoke and debris billows up into the starry night.
Eventually Vinny asks, “Now what?”
After a few moments of contemplation, Max answers with only two quiet words, “Big Mama.”
***
A loud boom and the crackle of flames cause the freeway-man to take a momentary break from his meal. His newly heightened hearing has added a third dimension to every sound. Now instead of merely hearing in stereo he is able to discern much more subtle nuances to sounds. Every wing flap or footstep is a cornucopia of information as it bounces and rebounds off of street signs and parked cars creating a directional funnel of sound information that not only can tell him the number of his prey but in what direction they travel and their approximate size. He wonders if this is what it is like for bats stalking the night –sometimes in pure blackness- for a tiny insect in the eternal vastness of the sky. Making use of his newfound skill, he quickly determines that the explosion came from the direction of the clinic.
After being shot by Vinny, he needed to feed. He’d lost too much blood and his strength was beginning to ebb. Since that time, he’d raided several homes in the area and found four people hiding in various rooms of two of the homes. He fed on all of them. Due to his weakened state he found it necessary to surprise them rather than savoring the hunt. Surprising them meant that they were only frightened for a moment before he attacked. The lack of sweet adrenaline cocktail pumping through their systems made the meals less satisfying than he had hoped, but nonetheless his strength was returning even greater than it was before. He could even feel his body working to regenerate itself, and he once again felt the vitality that Vinny had robbed from him earlier pumping through his veins. Still, the four victims that had just so graciously given their flesh for him did not quench his desire. He needed to feed on those other three, now more than ever. And, now more then ever, he was better equipped to do just that. If the explosion he just heard had consumed them, his disappointment would be immense.
The freeway-man drops the drained and lifeless body of the small girl in pigtails, and heads straight for the clinic. With his increased speed, he arrives quickly and though the blood of the infected masks their scents –like a bloodhound- he can still recognize their sweet odors underneath. He watches them as they idle in the Hummvy. He learned the hard way -twice now- that these three were no easy marks. That made his pursuit that much more alluring. Patience and cunning would be required in their conquest if he wanted to drink them all. So for now he will watch and wait…
Chapter 14 - The Roundup
Sean McAllister and Dwight Heart stand atop the roof of the Navy Federal building scanning the surrounding area with night vision goggles, and cursing their superior officer for leaving them alone on this concrete island with nothing more than their National Guard issued rifles and a two way radio.
Their sergeant -who seemingly held them in the lowest regard- had hand selected the two young soldiers for this task. It seemed that every shit-detail that arose was thrown at them. The last time he was feeling sour they received latrine duty. The time before, he made them scrub the barrack’s floor with toothbrushes. This however, was the first time that he had the opportunity to put them in harms way, and he didn’t hesitate to do so. The sergeant thought he was being a hard-ass. Everyone else thought he was just an ass. When Sean and Dwight get back to headquarters, they plan to piss in his coffee at their earliest convenience.
The night was cool and the two soldiers were shooting-the-shit. So far, they’d seen nothing else worth shooting. About ten minutes ago, they heard an explosion and saw smoke streaming up in the distance. As per orders, they sat tight and reported what they saw, and from their current location, they couldn’t see much given there was an ordinance in the area about buildings being more than two stories high. At three stories tall the Navy Federal building –where they now perch- predated that ordinance. It was the highest thing around, but it still offered a poor vantage point for anything going on in the distance.
Dwight picks up a pair of night vision binoculars and trains them in the direction of the fire, “Looks like it’s still burning pretty good over there. What do you think are the chances of the fire department showing up?”
“Zero,” replies Sean, “you know, any time there’s a real disaster first thing that happens is police and fire go home to take care of their families. Hell, I don’t blame them. If I wasn’t too young, dumb, and full of cum to have a family I would leave too.”
Dwight nods from behind the binoculars, “I hear you. What’s the point of saving strangers when your own family is getting sucked dry by one of those things? And speaking of being full of cum, what ever happened between you and that supply clerk? Did you hit that or what?”
Sean grimaces, “Sergeant found out about it and cock blocked me. He ratted us out and had her shift changed…” Sean trails off for a moment as something catches his eye, “Hey look it’s one of ours.”
Sean points in the direction of a Hummvy coming down the street and weaving through cars that were blocking the road. It appears to be headed for the freeway.
“You think that’s the missing unit they radioed about?” Dwight asks.
“Looks like it,” answers Sean, “Maybe they’re the ones that started that fire. Do you think we should try to raise them, or just call it in to H.Q.?”
Dwight swings the binoculars up and gets a closer look, “Wait a second… those are civilians in that thing. Looks like two or three of them, and bloody as hell… I say we call it in. Last thing we want to do is alert any of the infected to where we are.”
“You’re right, I’ll radio H.Q.”
Sean grabs the short-wave radio and informs H.Q. that they have a military Hummvy in sight, possibly that of the unit that had been missing for the past few hours, and that it’s occupied by at least three -possibly infected- civilians. H.Q. radios back with orders not to engage them, and to let them pass.
“Copy that.” Responds Sean before he releases the transmit button.
“No shit, don’t engage. These little guns won’t do jack to a Hummvy, and would probably just piss those things off.” says Dwight as he spits on the t
ar paper that covers the rooftop on which they stand.”
A soft crackling noise interrupts their conversation.
“Did you hear that?” asks Sean, cocking his head to the side in an attempt to locate the source of the sound.
“I didn’t hear a…” Dwight’s words are replaced by a gurgling noise and his head slumps down to his chin.
“What the fu…” is all that Sean is able to get out before his windpipe is severed in two by a blood-soaked, gray haired man in khakis.
Sean’s head flops the opposite direction from Dwight’s but soon they will be equally dead.
Dwight and Sean’s bodies slump to the tarpaper one after the other. Dwight lies flat on his face to reveal several crushed and exposed vertebrae at the base of his skull. He is paralyzed, but alive for the moment, just long enough to see the freeway-man head straight for the edge of the roof and drop silently back into the night from whence he came.
***
Max is weaving through the ever worsening and ghostly traffic jam of empty vehicles that clog the streets as they near the freeway. Some of the doors of the cars have been ripped off of the hinges. On other vehicles, the glass has been shattered. A few of the cars still house victims –drained of fluids- leaning this way or that inside. Some are slumped over their steering wheels and others lay half way out of the open door with their throats ripped out. The empty cars had presumably housed victims as well at some time. They were the unlucky ones that had turned after being bitten. Max imagines them rising up to feed alongside those that had just infected them. He knew that realistically it probably took a bit longer for someone to become fully infected, but there did seem to be a correlation between the times it took for someone to go completely ape-shit and the severity of the bite.
Up ahead, the road appears to be coming to an impasse. Vehicles are blocking the road and sidewalks from building-to-building.
Brooke asks Max, “Do you think we can plow through them?”
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