Beyond the Barriers (36 page)

She drew back, showing her teeth, and moaned. I kept my cool and shouldered the weapon. Reaching to my waist, I retrieved a long machete that had turned up at the slaughterhouse. It was stained red, but not from rust. I suspected they put animals down with it, probably with a slice across the throat. The most impressive thing had been the edge. It was almost sharp enough to split a hair. It did a good job of lifting the hair off a patch of my arm.

She moaned and snarled, but I wasn’t in the mood for zombie bullshit. I didn’t give her a chance to turn around and stand up. Instead, I moved forward and stepped to the side, so the overhanging tree wouldn’t stop my blow, then I buried the blade in the side of her head.

Adrenaline and the rancid aftertaste of energy drinks made me want to throw up. The sound was like hitting a cantaloupe with a knife. It sank in deep, and when I tried to withdraw it, the damn thing stuck.

I held on with both hands as her body spasmed. Still, to this day, I do not understand why massive damage to the brain kills the creatures. They are already dead; removing a limb just makes them mad. But for some reason, when you put some lead—or a blade—in their brainpans, they go down like a sack of potatoes.

It was the same for this one. She hit the ground and didn’t get back up. I got a glance at her prize, which was a leg. The end was partially eaten away, but it was still dressed. Male or female, I couldn’t tell from the shredded foot that was just a mass of gore hanging from the end. I turned away before the sight could get to me. After many months of this, I should be used to it. So much for having an iron gut.

There was a pair of zombies wandering near the edge of the woods, but I avoided them and moved farther along the perimeter. Within moments, I found what I was looking for.

By the light of day, it wasn’t nearly as ominous, but it was still the camp, and it still looked like a scene of hell. The cages lay like discarded hunks of metal, and some still housed inhabitants. We might have missed them during our escape, or they might have brought more people in during the night.

I came in at the wrong angle, and now I couldn’t see the little shack where the ghouls hung out. I would have to kill any that got in my way as I burned a path of destruction through the maze. Caution would be needed, and Scott and I had already discussed that. I didn’t want any of my fellow humans dying. Some might even be from Lisa’s band of survivors, and that would weight heavy on my already addled mind.

The only deaths I wanted to cause would help finish the job that God started with these things. I wanted them all on the ground, no longer moving.

The strangest thing in that strange day happened. A plane buzzed overhead. It was a small Cessna—something I hadn’t seen in a good long time. The tiny craft dipped low, slowed, and scanned the camp. I crouched down and took aim, just in case. But what in the world was I going to do? Shoot down a potential ally? If it held friends of Lee, then that might be a different story, but I doubted his ragtag group could muster up a pilot and organize flights to find him. It was only fifteen hours or so since I had kicked his ass out of the truck.

What did the airplane signify? Was there an organized base of some sort nearby? Maybe they were getting ready to fuel bomb the sight and I was about to join my enemies in a massive pyre.

Some of the dead paused in their aimless ambling. They looked up and considered the propelled bird, and then moved along again. I marked five or six right away and began to build up a map in my head. The topography of the piece of land left minimal cover. Lucky for me, I wouldn’t need it. Our plan was simple. I would provide a distraction to draw in the Z’s, start cutting them down, and then the guys would come in and take care of stragglers. Once we had most of them gathered close, it would be a slaughter.

That was the plan, but I knew from past experience that no part of a plan went as intended once that first shot was fired.

I skirted farther into the trees as the plane roared away in the distance. The wind shifted, and I got a whiff of the dead, the dying, and the rot of those left in the cages. Some had been forgotten or refused to do the bidding of the ghouls. Their lifeless bodies clutched bars or lay curled up. One, a woman, judging from her frame and remaining clothes, clutched a child to her chest. Her body was wasted, head covered in pus and scabs. Her desiccated arms latched onto the smaller person in a death grip. The child, who appeared to be about three, squirmed in her embrace. His eyes, green and glowing, shone with malevolent intent. I shuddered and moved in.

There was a group of them standing over a still body. They had torn off most of the person’s flesh, one arm, and part of a leg. I counted seven or eight of the things and decided it was a good place to start.

Slinging the rifle over my back, I checked my two handguns. I patted each magazine on my chest as I confirmed where everything lay. On each shoulder, a pair of green eggs sat. I had taken the time on the ride over to wrap the metal parts in strips of cloth, so they didn’t clink when I moved. Two came free in my hands.

The pin came out with a click that sounded as loud as a gunshot in my head. Well it was too late now; I was already moving away from cover to deliver my first volley.

With a large stride, I came out from behind a huge oak and swung my arm forward. The grenade flew in an arc that fell just short of the undead. After I popped the other pin, I moved one step closer. This one landed just to the side of one of the zombies. It looked at it, but nothing stirred in that brain. Nothing to tell it to move, jump, or just get the fuck out of the way. It stared at it like a curiosity.

The first explosion ripped the air in a ball of hate and high-speed shrapnel. I was already behind the large tree, trying to make myself as small as possible. Pieces of metal accelerated by the explosion whizzed past me, as did chunks of the dead. When I peeked around the corner, a scene from a nightmare greeted me. Some had been blown apart, while others had lost limbs and were still moving on the ground. There wasn’t much blood, owing to their strange physiology, but they still came apart just like normal humans.

One, bereft of its legs, crawled away, so I shot it first. Gun up, forehead sighted, the stock hammered into my shoulder as I put the thing down. Then I aimed and fired until I had finished most of them off.

I moved farther along the camp perimeter. The zombies were on the move, too, looking for the source of the explosion. They came off the ground, rising like ghostly apparitions. They moved in slow motion at first, but faster as they sensed something was up.

How could the dead sense anything? They might have reacted to sound or to the explosion, but they couldn’t see me. Still, I felt like they were looking right at me, like their eyes were burrowing into my soul.

It was the ghouls. They had to be stopped. I had to eradicate them and free their hold on the masses before me.

There were a few, then there were a couple more, then dozens of them. They came at the woods with their lumbering strides, slack jaws, and empty eyes. They came in their masses with the stench of the earth surrounding them. Flies buzzed around them in clouds as they feasted on blood and any exposed viscera they could find.

I moved from tree to tree, keeping them in my sight at all times. I would stop and fire, drop a few, and then move. But for every one I shot, two or three replaced them. The camp had been infested with the bastards. If I had to put a count to them, I would have guessed three or four hundred. I did not have that many shots.

Any minute now, the guys would come in blazing, flank the mass, and I would make for the shack and kill the green-eyed demons. The .50 caliber would ring out with its pulsating
whump whump whump,
and I would be able to complete my task.

More were on the move, and I had to make a run for it. I came to a clearing and jumped to the side in an attempt to stay out of view. I was behind a copse, but it was overgrown with blackberry bushes. I had to skirt it, and this exposed me to their eyes. They moaned and howled for my blood, and I shivered in the warming day.

Into the woods again. A branch to the face. Eyes closed as I brushed away the dry needles. Into a tree at nearly full speed. I struck it and nearly fell over, so I paused to catch my breath, smelling them on the air. They were close.

On the run again. More undead to my right. I wrapped the rifle strap over my shoulder so I could draw my handgun. A guy broke through the trees with a woman in tow. They were joined at the wrist by handcuffs, and I almost laughed out loud at the sight of them both naked. Must have been an interesting story there—one I wouldn’t ever get to hear. One they wouldn’t ever tell, either, as I shot them both. The first shot pegged the guy and tossed him to the ground like a ragdoll. I managed to get the girl in the shoulder as she spun, and a second shot took the side of her head off.

Moving again. There was a horde just ahead, so I unsnapped another grenade and threw it from my side, arm whipping out from my body. I kept moving as it WHUMPED behind me.

As if in answer, a gunshot called out behind me, far behind me. What kept them so long?

With the cavalry on the way, I decided to risk the open area. If they made speed in the truck, they would break into the open area in less than a minute.

I was twenty or thirty feet from the mass of zombies when I came screaming out of the trees, rifle blazing, popping off as many rounds as I could. All high shots, so I would take the zombies in the head, if possible. Changing magazines on the run was an exercise in patience, as I had to feel the rounds into the gun.

With a fresh round in the chamber, I blasted a couple that came into view ahead of me. One went down, but my second shot went wide, and I nearly ran into the second zombie. A front kick sent it reeling, and I passed the bastard, on my way again.

The shack was ahead, and, all around me, the cages rose like a weird circus. Some still had humans in them. We had to have missed them in the craziness of the night before. God, had it only been a day?

More shots sounded behind me—a mix of automatic and single rounds. That did not sound right. Then the big machine gun opened up, and I grinned as I shot another zombie. This bullet took it in the throat and must have passed through the spine because it went down without a sound.

The shack was just ahead. I didn’t know what purpose it had before, but now it was my target. I knew it sheltered the ghouls and served as their base, because I had seen people brought to it, and they did not come out. No matter the purpose, I had a surprise for the building. Something I had been saving.

I spun and shot, emptying an entire magazine. The group coming toward me fell, some now missing body parts. The violence of the bullets ripping into the mass was appalling.

Hitting the shack, I felt it rattle. I slammed into it again, then peeked around the corner toward the road that led into the compound. Jack and Scott should have been here by now!

It would have been much easier if we had some way to communicate. Even an old pair of cell phones with Bluetooth units, but those hadn’t worked in months.

Note to self: Get walkie talkies.

Note to self: Kill everything with green eyes.

The small building was constructed of corrugated steel. In the summer, it would have been a sauna. It was rusted on one side, and the few windows were covered over with wood and paper. I dropped into a crouch near one and tried to peer in by looking over my shoulder, but the coverings made it impossible to see inside.

With my back pressed to the wall, I slid toward the door. The dead were onto me and on the move. They were closing in from all sides, and it looked like I might have just one shot at this.

I ripped the last fragmentation grenade off my shoulder and stopped at the wooden door. When I hit the wall, then door popped open, but shut quickly from the force of my back striking the rickety building.

I pulled the pin and looked up briefly. Not a prayer exactly, just something I had seen done many times. If there was a God, he wasn’t here. The only thing here was the dead. Fuck the dead.

As gunfire erupted behind me, I popped the door open. As I poked my head around the corner of the doorway, I could have sworn something splatted across the ground nearby. What the hell was going on out there?

I would have to hope for the best, hope they got here soon. I didn’t have much time left.

I tossed the grenade in the shack then ran. The space was small enough that the shrapnel should put it down. It did a good job, all right, lifting the building up slightly with its explosion. The flat roof shifted to one side, and then smoke rose as the building fell on its side.

One wall went over, and the rest followed. A crumpled mass of old metal rang like a bell as it crashed to the ground. I picked myself up and went to the wreckage, hoping the confined space helped finish the job, but if any still lived, I would take them down with a bullet. I wanted this camp shut down and the green-eyed bastards eradicated from it.

The rumble of a giant machine gun called, assuring me that the cavalry had finally arrived.

A horde of zombies was on its way, so I slammed in a fresh magazine and opened up. From behind me came the sound of more groaning. They were calling for my flesh. Spinning, I dropped one that was too close—a woman missing part of her left arm and all of her right. Her ragged flesh hung like a nightmare, and where blood should have flowed, only bugs and maggots dwelled.