Zombies! (Book 6): Hold The Line

by Merritt, R. S.

  Ignoring the urge to crash on the couch and close his eyes Randy went to the back door leading out of the home and looked out the small curtain covered window. There was a large wooden deck wrapped around the back of the house. A shed and a barn stood out on the other side of an overgrown lawn. A tractor in front of the barn had weeds growing up through it and what looked like some kind of birds nest in the seat. Satisfied the back yard looked secure Randy nodded to Kelly and flashed her a thumbs up. She went to help Myriah and Caitlyn get the rest of the kids out of the car.

  Once they were all inside, they each picked a section of couch to lie down on. Kelly had found some canned food in the pantry that she was portioning out onto plates. That way everyone could have an early breakfast before turning in for the day. They did a quick round of paper, rock , scissors to see who got to take the first watch. Kyler lost consistently enough that everyone guessed he was doing it on purpose. Because of his leg he couldn’t drive, and he’d gotten to ride shotgun the whole time so for his part he had no problem standing the first watch.

  “We should check the barn later on and see if we can’t get some more gas for the car.” Randy said. Kelly looked at him sharply.

  “We already have enough to drive to Maine and back. We can’t fit anything else in the trunk because of all the gas cans. Plus, the whole freakin car smells like gas already.” She said firmly. Randy smiled at her, yawned and turned over to go to sleep. Kelly stared at him a little longer from the couch on the opposite side of the room to make sure he didn’t try to get up and go find more gas. Doreen climbed up on the couch to snuggle in with Kelly.

  Kyler went around the house pulling all the curtains closed. He used tape to completely close off the ones that wanted to keep pulling apart and letting in the early morning sunlight. He took a quick peek out of each window prior to sealing it to see if anything looked out of place. He’d be walking around to each window as long as he was on guard duty and looking out a hole that he left in each one to see if anything was out there. He was on his third round when he noticed something moving out of the peek hole that he’d left in the curtain covering the back window.

  The barn door was being shoved open and infected were pouring out of it into the light. They must’ve nested there the night before. Kyler felt his stomach drop. If they’d pulled up to this place earlier or made too much noise they’d have been swarmed. It didn’t look like there was just a few Zombies camped out in the barn either. From the hole he was looking out of Kyler had already counted ten different ones lurching out.

  He thought about waking everyone up. As the person on guard duty who’d just seen an obvious threat that was pretty much his duty at this point. He didn’t see much point in it though. Waking them up would cause noise. If a single word was spoken too loudly it could alert the infected that someone was in the home. If one of the infected had the enhanced hearing it might not even take a spoken word to alert them that their prey was in the home right next to them. Once alerted it wouldn’t take them long to beat their way in through the multitude of windows positioned around the high wooden deck.

  Their best chance as Kyler saw it was for him to sit tight and observe. With any luck the Zombies would come out of the barn and then wander back into the woods or onto the road or wherever the hell they’d been in the process of wandering when they bedded down in the barn for the night. He shifted around to get a better view and felt his heartbeat go up. There were a lot more infected out there than he’d thought. They were pulling themselves up off the ground where they’d been hidden by the weeds. They were coming out from inside and under the trailer that was on the other side of the property. He gave up counting once he realized there were way more Zombies outside than they had bullets inside.

  Not wanting to risk it but feeling like he needed to check he went to the other windows and glanced through the peep holes in each. The view out each of the windows multiplied how screwed they were. The infected were popping up all over the place. He watched as one crawled out from under the screened in patio that they’d stood on earlier to get in the house. He shuddered thinking back to how Randy had knocked on the door multiple times. At the time they hadn’t realized every noise they made was like a kid playing with matches at a gunpowder warehouse. One wrong move and the whole place would’ve gone up.

  Indecision racked Kyler as he watched the infected outside the home jerkily shaking themselves awake for the day. One lady looked completely normal from the back. She was wearing a yellow summer dress and still had a pair of bright green crocs on her feet. Her long hair had managed to repel the mud and briars so many of the other Zombies sported. Kyler watched her until she turned in his direction. One look at her crazed, sore covered face dispelling all notions that she wasn’t a card-carrying member of the Zombie club. She was busy sniffing at the air around her like she was looking for something. She stopped the sniffing abruptly then sprinted across the dirt road into the woods on the other side. A handful of the Zombies closest to her saw her running away and followed.

  Other Zombies saw those Zombies running into the woods and instantly took off after them. The herd instinct took over and soon all the Zombies around the house had gone tearing into the woods. Kyler went to each window to triple check all the Zombies were gone. Once he’d confirmed it looked like they were all gone, he woke up Randy and Kelly. He spent a few minutes explaining to them what he’d just seen and why he hadn’t woken them up.

  “How the hell did we go to sleep in the middle of a giant nest and not know it?” Randy asked. The question was wildly rhetorical, but Kelly took a shot at it anyway.

  “We were tired. They were hidden. This isn’t something we’ve been checking for when we look for a place to spend the night. If we’d found them then there’s a good chance that they’d have found us. If that’d happened it would’ve ended badly.” She reasoned.

  “You guys think we should get in the car and get the hell out of here right now or what?” Kyler asked. He was already looking around the room to see what all they needed to grab.

  “We sure the Zombies are all gone?” Randy asked. It was a valid question. Kyler shrugged. He’d told them he’d watched at least a hundred Zombies take off into the woods. There was no way to tell if a few of them might be hanging around still. For all they knew there could be another hundred standing in the woods just waiting for someone to be dumb enough to walk outside and show themselves.

  “What’s going on?” Caitlyn asked. She’d woken up to see Kyler and her parents huddled together whispering excitedly about something. People huddled together whispering excitedly in hushed voices was rarely a good thing now a days.

  They went through the whole scenario with Caitlyn. Kelly did it without telling her any of the ideas they’d come up with for dealing with it. She wanted to see what Caitlyn came up with on her own. The opinion of someone who hadn’t been arguing about what they should do for the last ten minutes would be a good thing to have. Once she was done telling her what had happened, she asked Caitlyn what she thought that they should do about it.

  “I think we need to wait until it gets dark to leave. We can’t really risk doing anything now in the daylight since there may still be some Zombies hanging out. They start screeching we’ll have hundreds of them on top of us. We don’t know how far those ones went that Kyler saw run into the woods.” Caitlyn cut to the chase quickly after listening to what Kyler had seen. It was the fresh perspective they all needed.

  “I say we do what she said.” Kyler said grinning. Her plan made perfect sense to him. The only person slightly off put by the plan was Kelly. She’d been advocating getting the hell out of dodge as fast as they could wake everybody up. Hanging out here until it got dark seemed risky to her. What if the Zombies came back to nest there again tonight? They had no clue what’d made the Zombies get up and move in the first place. They weren’t sure why sometimes the Zombies stayed in the same places for weeks or months either. The choice to stay where they were or run fo
r their lives immediately could end up being the difference between life or death. Then again having to pull over to pee could get you killed in this new normal.

  They let the kids continue to sleep. Kelly and Randy took the next shift. Kyler lie down thinking there was no way he’d be able to fall asleep. The sun was starting to go down when Caitlyn shook him awake. His eyes opened. He groggily sat up and looked around to make sure everything was ok. He was disoriented for a second because the room had gotten so dark. He finally realized he’d slept the day away. He looked up at Caitlyn who was smiling down at him.

  “You should probably never bother with playing poker. Your face pretty much gives away everything you’re thinking.” She teased.

  “Yeah if you can see past the scars.” He muttered as he stood up.

  “The scars aren’t that bad. You should check out a mirror sometime. You seem to think you’re way uglier than you actually are.” Caitlyn whispered at him. Red faced she turned away quickly to go wake up the others.

  Kyler stood there open mouthed trying to figure out if she’d just complimented or insulted him. He was pulled out of that quandary by Randy asking him to help pack up their gear and place it by the front door. The plan was to have everyone stack up by the door after making sure the coast still looked clear. Once it looked good to go, they’d all move at once to the car to leave. Caitlyn was busy explaining to the kids what they were supposed to do as soon as the door opened. None of them were being carried this time. Randy wanted everyone armed and handsfree in case a random Zombie was still sleeping in the area and decided to wake up now.

  Keeping their hands free turned out to be a great idea. Almost as soon as they started walking from the house to the car screeches split the early evening air. Three Zombies came sprinting out of the woods straight at them. Considering they were going to have the littles walking and they needed to get in the car as quickly as possible they’d already talked through how’d they engage if attacked.

  Kyler stepped towards the three Zombies with his rifle tucked neatly into this shoulder. The rest of them focused on getting the kids in the car. Three shots rang out. The reason Kyler had been chosen to be the designated shooter was his accuracy and calm under pressure. They had very limited ammunition at this point and didn’t want to waste any of it. Kyler had put rounds center of mass in each of the rushing Zombies knocking them to the ground. The mortally wounded Zombies were still crawling towards them but not fast enough to be a danger before they hopefully were all in the car and driving away.

  What was much more concerning than the snarling Zombies pulling themselves towards them were all the screeches coming from the woods around them. Kyler hopped into his shotgun spot in the car and shifted Doreen around to be on his lap. All of the littles were wide awake at this point. They’d been cooped up and told to keep their eyes closed for most of the last three days. There was a real possibility of them all dying in the next fifteen minutes. There was a zero percent chance of them being able to keep the kids quiet since they knew they were allowed to talk in the car. Plus, they were being chased by about a million screaming Zombies anyway so did it really matter if the kids wanted to ask a thousand questions?

  Kelly was driving faster than was safe on the bumpy, washed out dirt road they were on. There was one section where they were going to have to detour through a field to get past a section where half the road had eroded into a small stream. No big deal when they’d driven in since they’d just taken their time navigating around it. Taking their time on the way out didn’t look like it was going to be an option. Kelly was freaked out they were going to crash into the ravine at high speed on the way out. She kept asking everybody if they remembered how far away that part of the road had been.

  When she didn’t get any replies that sounded confident, she eased up on the accelerator and hit the brights on the dashboard so she could see better. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if they slammed into that washed out part of the road while they were blindly hauling ass. Kyler was also staring straight ahead looking for the wash out or anything else that may get in their way. Myriah shrieked and told him to look out his window. A shadowy figure had emerged in front of them running right at the sedan. Kelly was refusing to swerve since she figured a ding in the fender was better than sliding off the road into the woods.

  The Zombie slammed into the front passenger side of the car hard enough to shake the whole vehicle. It’s body bent in half by the bumper that connected hard with its lower half. The Zombie succumbed to the laws of physics. It ended up lying broken in the weeds while the sedan cruised on by. Albeit with half of its front bumper dragging on the rough road. The hardened plastic in the bumper held on by a few strategically placed screws wasn’t going to survive the journey to the end of the road.

  Ambivalent to the structural integrity of the front of the sedan Kelly sped up slightly to try and get them out of contact range with the Zombie herd. They were all hoping the bulk of the Zombies were behind them. Another shadowy figure was revealed by the high beams as it jumped impossibly high in the air to come down feet first on the hood of the car. Determined not to crash Kelly ignored the beast as it stumbled towards the windshield before losing its balance and falling off the car.

  That bit of a distraction was enough for them all to miss what they’d been watching out for the whole time. The car slammed into the ravine caused by the road being washed out. They weren’t going fast enough for it to do significant damage to the car, but it was fast enough for the airbags to deploy. The airbags slamming Kyler, Doreen and Kelly back in their seats like they’d been kicked by donkeys. Kelly blacked out for a second then scrambled to check on Doreen. All she could think of was that children weren’t supposed to ride in the front seat because the airbags could snap a small child’s neck.

  “She’s ok! We’ve got to get this car out of this ditch or we’re dead.” Kyler said through a massively bruised lip that was starting to swell nicely. Doreen had been hit by the airbag then her head had smashed into Kyler’s face.

  Kelly tried putting the car in reverse but that just caused the RPMs to shoot way up. She heard the doors start opening as the rest of them realized they were going to have to push the car out. Kyler stood a little way back from the car and tucked the assault rifle back into his armpit again. With his bum leg he was going to be on sniper duty. Caitlyn and Randy ran around to the front of the car with Myriah in tow. They all jumped down into the ditch and started pushing as hard as they could.

  Kyler started shooting. Zombies were coming from every direction. He used up his magazine in no time at all and had to grab Caitlyn’s rifle out of the back seat. Not wanting to waste bullets, he waited until the Zombies were danger close to shoot them. In the distance he was starting to see more moving shadows than they could possibly fight. He dropped the rifle on the sling and hopped down into the ditch. Ignoring the pain in his leg he put everything he had into helping them push.

  The car shifted back slightly. Kyler got ready to push again but that first push turned out to be enough for the tires to catch hold. They were all covered in dirt and rocks as the tires spun rapidly in the mud directly in front of their faces. Ignoring the blood dripping down on his face from a piece of gravel cracking him in the forehead Kyler looked up for a way out of the ditch. A Zombie was staring down at him. As soon as their eyes met the Zombie screeched and hopped into the ditch. Kyler tried to get his rifle into play but ended up using all his strength to hold the Zombie away from his face while the monster snarled and bit at the air inches away from him.

  Randy started cracking the Zombie in the head with a machete. The third time he swung the machete it went in deep and the Zombie dropped to its knees. Leaving the machete stuck in the Zombie Randy bounded out of the ditch and held out a hand to help Kyler up. Everyone else was already running towards the car. The screeches of the Zombies coming from all around them now. Their window to get out of this mess was rapidly shrinking.

  Kyler and Randy made a
run for the car. Kelly was driving forward slowly to shorten the distance for them. Myriah was already in her seat. Caitlyn was holding a pistol and walking beside the car shooting off into the darkness. Kyler couldn’t tell what she was shooting at since him and Randy were both blinded by the high beams. When they were almost at the car Caitlyn spun and pointed the gun right at him and Randy. They both dropped onto their knees immediately and began crawling towards the open car doors. Caitlyn emptied her magazine into the three Zombies who’d almost caught her dad and Kyler from behind.

  In the car they all slammed their doors shut. Kyler’s door got stuck on a Zombies arm that was reaching in trying to grab him. He opened and slammed the door multiple times while Kelly focused on driving them around the washout and back on the road. If they could make it around this obstacle and there weren’t too many Zombies ahead of them then they might still be able to make it.

  The Zombie ignored having its arm slammed in the door. It just kept getting closer every time Kyler opened the door to slam its arm again. Doreen was screaming and climbing into the back seat. Kelly was driving slowly through the field around the ditch. Kyler knew she was gun shy after running them into the washout but if she didn’t speed up soon then they were dead meat. He slammed the door again and held it closed with one arm. The Zombie trotted alongside the car screeching and gnashing its teeth. More Zombies were closing in on them. Kyler fumbled out his pistol with his other hand. He opened the door and aimed it at the Zombie’s head.