He took a few steps away from everyone, making sure he was out of earshot, hidden in the rows of industrial racking. Keeping his back to everyone, he pressed the talk button on the radio and spoke quietly into the mic. “Guys, this is Dave. I need you to listen and don’t give me any shit about radio etiquette. If you hear or see anything…” He paused, suddenly feeling stupid for what he was about to tell them. It was obvious they would be seeing and hearing things, unless the two had been struck blind and deaf within the last few minutes. If there was one thing Dave despised was verbally stating the obvious. It’s why he’d lost his shit with Carl. It was the same when anyone said, it is what it is. He was lucky when he contained his reaction to an exaggerated eye roll that threatened to pull him over backward. “If there’s anything that doesn’t sound or look right,” he continued, correcting his verbal course. “Do not radio in and wait for instructions. I repeat! Do not wait for orders. You get up, turn around and get your asses back in here. On the double. Understood?” He released the button and waited for what felt like hours but could have only been seconds, before the radio crackled.
“That’s a roger, Color Leader. Blue Team out,” CJ replied.
“Red Team, roger that.”
Dave grimaced, hearing the tag the twins had given him. He didn’t remember agreeing to even have a callsign. But for good or bad, right or wrong, he’d been appointed the leader of their band of asylum-seeking travelers. He was the one they were looking to for direction and to make the right decisions to keep them all safe. He knew Pam would always support him and help carry that responsibility. She’d ride this car off the fucking rails if that’s the way he steered them. But ultimately, he was the one at the wheel and the weight still sat heavily on his shoulders and he considered if he would be able to carry it. The decisions he made could risk lives, maybe even lose them and he promised himself he’d never, fucking ever, make another one by shooting from the hip.
“I don’t understand why we haven’t seen any military,” he heard Ben say as he rejoined the others.
“Oh. They’ve already been through here,” Carl said.
“What? When?” Dave asked, surprised by this piece of unmentioned information.
“About an hour before you folks arrived,” Carl answered. “A bunch of our boys in uniform came tearing ass up the highway. There were a couple big rigs, like transports or something. They had some smaller ones too, and two or three Jeep-looking things with something in the backs of each one. I couldn’t tell what they were because they had them all tarped off, but if I had to guess, I’d say they were 50-cal chain guns mounted in the back. I fired them a few times when I served our country. Even though they had them covered up, they were pretty easy to spot.”
“Shit!” Dave said. “Which way were they heading?”
“West. Same as us, I guess. Is something wrong?” Carl asked.
“The gunfire CJ and Jacob heard. It could have been them,” Dave said.
“Why would they be firing?” Carl asked.
Pam looked at him to see if he was joking and could tell he was not. Her gaze swept across everyone else’s and landed on Dave’s. She watched the color drain from his face like water spiraling down a toilet and started to shout his name. To tell him to call the boys back. To tell them to come inside and then they all needed to leave, but his hand was already pulling the walkie-talkie from his pocket and moving it to his lips.
“Blue Team, this is Red,” Jacob crackled over the radio, startling Dave enough to cause him to fumble the radio. “Someone’s coming,” he added as the walkie-talkie bounced off Dave’s foot and onto the cement. There was a horrible moment when it left his hands and he was sure it would shatter into pieces on contact. He managed to get his toe under it at the last second but unintentionally sent it skittering across the floor.
“Red Team, this is Blue. I hear it too, but I don’t see any headlights on the road,” CJ replied.
“Me neither, Blue Team,” said Jacob.
The group in the warehouse scrambled to retrieve the radio from under the pallet where it had landed. Dave prayed they’d do as he’d told them and hightail it back inside. The warehouse doors were directly to the back of the building and the twins had gone out to cover the opposite sides. CJ had gone right, back toward the offramp they’d used, and Jacob had taken the left side. By going past the paved lot and into the brush as far as they had, they could see completely around the sides to the back of the rental place and still cover the front which faced the road. But with the radio blaring from under a stack of truck-bed liners, it felt to Dave like the twins were on another planet.
“I can’t reach it,” Ben yelled. His arm was already shoulder deep under the pallet and Dave could see it waving back and forth.
“Are you sure it’s under that one?” Mike shouted.
“I saw it go under. I think I touched it with my fingertips, but I can’t quite…” Ben said, struggling to reach deeper.
“Red Team, do you see those lights?” CJ asked his brother.
“The ones in the trees?” Jacob responded without the radio protocol.
“Just come inside,” Dave screamed at the elusive radio like somehow they’d be able to hear him.
“Move!” Zack yelled to Ben and the others. From just a few feet away, he slammed himself into the stack of bed liners, making them rock and sending the top one tumbling off. Joe stood beside him when Zack righted himself, understanding what he was doing and nodded to him.
“It looks like there’s two of them,” CJ said to his brother over the airwaves.
“Ready?” Joe asked.
“Go!” Zack shouted, and they both slammed against the stack of molded fiberglass again. The remaining shells toppled, leaving one remaining on the pallet. Joe and Zack bent and placed their fingertips under the side rail.
“Are those headlights?” Jacob asked over the staticky hiss.
Ben bent down between Zack and Joe to help. “On one,” he told his brothers, curling his finger under the edge of the skid.
“J-Jacob,” CJ radioed. “Do you hear… screaming?”
“One!” Ben yelled as he and his brothers flipped the pallet and remaining bed liner sideways, unearthing the radio.
Dave lunged for the walkie-talkie. From the corner of his eye, he saw Carl disappear out the door leading from the warehouse to the hallway and out to the front of the building. He swept the radio from the floor and spun to follow Carl, tossing the walkie-talkie to Pam.
“Get them inside!” he told her. “Everyone else grab your guns and meet us in the store!” Dave shouted his orders as he shouldered the door to the hallway.
None of them had thought to continue carrying their guns once they’d gotten to know each other and had set about working in the warehouse. Now Dave would need to burn precious seconds to stop in the break room to retrieve his as would the others.
Running through the open door, Dave made a direct beeline for his shotgun. At the same moment he slammed into the wall the twelve-gauge was leaning against, he snatched it up by the barrel. He could hear the others rushing to follow him as their heels clacked on the tiled floor in the hall.
“Jesus, sweetie! What’s going on?” Lynn asked as Dave pushed off the wall with his free hand to reverse his direction and made for the door. “I just saw Carl run past. Is something wrong?”
“Yes!” Dave shouted at the same instant he crashed into Brigette, knocking her back into Zack and Ben, with the rest of the family behind them.
“Shit! Sorry!” Dave barked. Because Zack had been there to block her fall, Brigette hadn’t been sent sprawling to the floor and recovered quickly. “Mike. Stay here with Lynn and the boys,” Dave shouted, heading down the hall.
“I got it,” Mike replied from the other end.
“I’m going to the roof,” Brigette said, grabbing her rifle she’d fortuitously leaned next to the door.
Flinging the strap over her head, she held her AR in both hands, using it to shove he
r way back through the family to get into the warehouse. On the other side of the door separating the hall from the warehouse, was a metal ladder mounted to the wall. It led to a hatch at the top that opened onto the roof. That was where she intended to be in less than a minute if her legs could pump her up the ladder fast enough.
“Ben. Grab your rifle and come with me!” she said.
Ben followed her lead, grabbed his rifle and pushing back through the others as Dave burst through the door and into the store. The emergency lights in the corners of the store cast hollow shadows down the rows of store shelves and across floor displays for riding mowers, portable smokers and other, residential fare. Dave saw Carl standing stock still at the double glass doors at the end of the center aisle. Dave rushed to join him and start flagging the twins to come inside, but he became transfixed as Carl was, with what he was seeing.
From the far ends of the tree line, directly across the street, thick beams of bright light bounced and danced between the trunks and branches of the trees. The directional source of the beams appeared to be ever-changing. Constantly shifting position and angle. Making them look as if the light source was moving, possibly even spinning like the computerized lighting arrays at a bumping nightclub. Dave stared with Carl, mesmerized by the shifting and twirling lights that danced and leaped from between the trees.
“Are you seeing this?” Carl asked Dave when he finally realized he was standing next to him.
“Uh-huh,” Dave answered, fighting the hypnotizing effect of the spinning lights.
Zack and Joe had joined the two men, and Dave couldn’t be certain exactly when they’d entered the sales floor, but they stood on either side of their father now. They must have been as dumbfounded as Dave, because they just stood motionless, slack-jawed silence.
“The boys aren’t answering the ra—” Pam started to say as she pushed through the door from the hallway. Her words cut off the moment she looked into the shifting and rolling lights, moving through the trees.
From somewhere outside, a vibration began to grow. Inside the store, the noise bounced off the three walls of glass and the cement wall in the back, making it echo as if it was coming from all around them. Like the air they were breathing was emanating the growing sound. What started as a buzzing hum, steadily increased in intensity. It surged and moved with the jutting beams of light.
“Are those…?” Pam started to ask.
“Angels?” Carl finished for her.
“I was thinking aliens,” Joe muttered.
“Or the four fucking horsemen,” Zack said as the sound increased to an angry growl.
“It’s fucking engines!” Dave shouted, finally able to place what he was hearing.
Everyone who’d been mesmerized in the store, reacted as if they’d been slapped. The hold the moving lights had on them was immediately shattered as the first of the people began spilling through the trees. There must have been twenty or more, spreading out in all directions at a stumbling run. As soon as they broke from the tree line and the underbrush at their feet, their gaits improved and their strides became steadier. They all seem to spot the store’s darkly glowing emergency lighting through the huge glass windows of the store at the same time and altered their course to converge on the structure.
“Zombies,” Zack shouted, raising his double barrels and preparing to shoot through the glass.
“No. Wait,” Pam shouted. “Look at their faces.”
Pam was right. These were not the faces of a rabid horde descending on them. They were the faces of husbands and wives, teenagers and siblings. Some carried others or helped them along as they clawed and stumbled from the trees in desperation. All of them with the pallid look of shock and mortal terror in their eyes. The people clambering their way into the narrow field separating the tree line from the road, then the rental lot and the store itself, bore the terrified faces of the hunted.
“They’re being chased,” Pam said, pushing past the men to get to the glass doors and get them opened. “I can’t reach it,” she yelled, stretching to turn the lock at the top of the door.
“I’ve got it,” Dave shouted over the rumbling growl echoing off the interior walls. He nudged Pam over and easily flipped the lock at the top while she bent to twist the one at the bottom.
The people fleeing the trees saw the glass doors push open as they reached to within a few yards of the road and the first of the flesh-eating horde tore through the trees and into the field. The fleeing crowd screamed in unified horror as scores of zombies spilled into the field like jackals chasing their quarry. They glided over the field like a soundless wave trying to engulf the beach. Their infected faces were pulled back in silent snarls of ravenous intent as they spread their surging line past the edges of the stumbling runners ahead of them. Fresh blood stained their faces and hands, and dark goo smeared down their fronts. Their clothes hung like rags, most of them with visible injuries that should have been debilitating, or in some cases, fatal. Thick swatches of flesh had been ripped from faces, exposing gnashing teeth and jawbones, as they tightened the noose being drawn closed around their targets. The far edges of the zombie line had already reached the side of the paved, two-lane road closest to the open lot as Dave and Carl pushed through the doors with Zack and Joe behind them.
“Get in the back and lock all the doors!” Dave shouted to Pam as the men lined up on the walkway outside the store.
“They’re not going to make it,” Pam shouted, ignoring Dave’s orders.
“Go,” Dave yelled, shouldering his shotgun and taking aim at a zombie about to bring down a mother hopefully racing to safety with a young child in her arms.
His shoulder bucked from the recoil as he pulled the trigger at the same moment the zombie leaped onto the woman’s back, driving her and the child to the ground, and forcing his shot to go high. Three more zombies pounced on, digging into their soft flesh as Dave fired two more times. From his distance, the hurtling buckshot did little more than annoy the feasting quartet. They continued ripping long swaths of dripping meat from the screaming woman. One of the fiends leaned back and shook its head from side to side, choking a piece down with its jaws still snapping.
Dave saw a momentary green dot appear on the zombie’s throat, an instant before a sharp crack violently shoved the monster back and off the pile, a ragged hole where most of its neck used to be. A second dot appeared on the head of another who’d paused to look up, possibly trying to decide what had become of his dinner companion. Another crack and this one went spilling off to the side, its head exploding into a dark, chunky spray.
“Over here. This way,” Jacob screamed to the people who’d already made it into the lot. He was moving back toward the building but was still more than a hundred yards from it. Every few steps, he’d stop and acquire another target, take the shot and then scream again. Dave and the other men followed his example, although with their short-range weapons and pistols, they weren’t as effective as Jacob’s laser-mounted rifle. Joe was the first to give up on shooting into the melee with his pistol. He began yelling and waving his arms to draw the would-be survivors who weren’t being feasted upon, their way. They all began screaming and yelling over the growling noise that had become a roar, as the lights pitched violently through the trees.
From the other side of the building, CJ had joined in the rescue attempt. He stood in the tall grass and shrubs with his feet planted apart, taking well-placed shots into the closing horde. Those trying to escape being savagely torn apart by the monsters pursuing them had seen the men trying desperately to save as many as they could, but the zombies had seen them as well. Now many of them were giving up their pursuit and veered off toward the more stationary objects.
The engine sounds reached a crescendo as two military jeeps came crashing and bouncing through the trees and into the narrow field. From opposite ends of the tree line, the drivers of the Jeeps jerked the wheels to the side and hit the blinders. The heavy vehicles slid to a stop, sending a wave o
f chewed-up turf from beneath the tires. Dave could barely make out soldiers in the back because of the row of high-intensity floodlights lining the roll bar on the top of the cab. But he could clearly see the heavy caliber guns the soldiers were positioned behind. They each leaned forward and jerked the charging handle back, locking the first of the chain-fed projectiles into their chambers.
“Get down!” Dave screamed.
He had just enough time to feel the cords in his throat begin to tear from the effort, as the guns began to fire. Compared to the noise from the Jeeps’ engines powering through the trees and their own shouts to safety and gunfire, the guns the soldiers employed sounded like cannons. The rapid-fire concussion pounded their ears, forcing them all to uncontrollably blink and wince with each round fired. Their first volley dug a deep trail of holes into the ground, tracing a line to the horde and stitching it across their flanks. Limbs flew in multiple directions as the shells blasted through joints and bone. Holes erupted from their chests, creating craters in their wakes and cutting down the zombies like a roaring sickle of doom, hacking down a field of fetid wheat. Heads exploded into clouds of black mist. Shredded organs blasted out in all directions, coating the tall grass and bushed in dark sprays of ruined flesh.
“Yeah! That’s our boys.” Carl stood and cheered, pumping his fist into the air as the zombies fell in pieces.
The F*cked Series (Book 3): Mean Page 11
