Books of the Dead (Book 1): Sanctuary From The Dead (19 page)

Mike had been here before, probably on his tour in Iraq during the Gulf War.  He knew what was about to go down and I hadn’t the slightest fucking clue.  This was a whole new experience for me
, and getting my head around it was nearly impossible.  It didn’t really matter, because Mike took that moment to toss the grenade into the room.  We were on the move to the second room.

I fol
lowed him into the room, seeing five men, two with their guns pointed out the window.  All of the men had on olive drab uniforms and not one of them looked to be over twenty five.  One of the men aimed and fired into the darkness.

Mike made a quick
step to his right and lowered himself to one knee allowing me space to enter.  As I lowered myself to one knee, my foot pressed against a school desk, causing the leg to make a slight scratching noise against the floor.  One of the men, standing with his back to us, turned his head and looked at me, an expression of disbelief coming over his face -- a real WTF moment.  He started to swivel, trying to bring his gun to the firing position toward us. 

The grenade went off in the room next door
, and someone screamed in pain.

Mike let off a quick burst and the man turning towards us flew backward from the impact of the bullets, blood spattering the wall before he hit it.  He went slack, slumping to the ground.  The two men on my side of the room jerked around
. I did what I had to do, my bullets caught the first one across the abdomen and the second one across the chest and neck, blood spurting forth like a geyser from the neck wound.  The one with the neck wound dropped his rifle and clutched at the bullet holes as if he was trying to stop the bleeding, but it was too late.  He slumped back against the wall and slid down, hitting the floor and falling onto his side, his mouth moving soundlessly.  For some reason, all I could think of was a fish out of water, sucking for breath.  His hand moved to his neck, blood pumping between his fingers.  Then the fingers lost all their strength, dropping away from his seeping neck wound and the dimming light behind his eyes went out completely.

Mike shot the last man in the room, knocking him backwards through the wi
ndow, and into the black night.  Mike was up and moving, giving me a light tap on the shoulder as he moved past me, telling me to follow him.  He cautiously walked into the first room in a crouch, sighting down his M-16 for anything still moving.  My body felt numb and insubstantial, almost something separate from my being, like a ghost as I followed him. 

The room was a wreck.  S
moke from the explosion settled towards the floor revealing the carnage.  Parts of school desks were cast about the room in jagged pieces.  Mike reached out and pushed me lightly to the right in the direction of the wall as he moved off to the left.  I hugged the wall, moving forward through the debris as Mike moved up toward the windows.  The stench of the smoke almost sent me into a coughing fit.

I saw the first body
just after I entered.  It was a man in an army uniform.  He lay face down with half dozen shrapnel wounds in his back, blood oozing from each entry point.  I became fixated on him for a few seconds, wondering who he was, wondering if he was really attacking us or was he just along for the ride? 

I looked up and Mike was almost to the front of the room.  I started forward again.

There were three more downed men at the front of the room.  Another one sat in the corner with his hands to his face, blood seeping between his fingers while he moaned.

Mike went by the other men, nudging each one of them with a foot.  None of them moved. 

We converged on the man in the corner, his head jerked about as we got closer.  He pulled one of his hands away from his face, but held the other there while his hand searched the floor.  Just as he touched an M-16, Mike placed his foot on his fingers.  The man let out a grunt and yanked his hand away.

“I can’t see anything,” the man said in a plaintive voice.

Mike knelt next to man and asked, “How many guys are with you?”

The man’s head jerked in Mike’s direction
, but he didn’t say anything.

Mike jabbed the barrel of his rifle in the man’s side and said.  “I asked you a question.  How many men are out there attacking our friends?”  The man tried to jerk away from the barrel
, but he was up against the wall with nowhere else to go.

Blood continued to seep between his fingers.  “There are thirty seven of us.”

“We saw a MAV Stryker and some Humvees.  What else do you have?”

“Everyone’s got M-16 A4s.  We have a shitload of other things.  Grenade launchers, some mortars, but we were running low on rounds.  We have some shoulder mounted missiles, too.”

The ugly churning of a heavy machine gun resounded outside the school.

“Where’d you come from?”

“We were based at Camp Atterbury in Indiana.”

“How’d you end up here?  Did you use the drone to find us?”

“What?  Drone?”  They obviously hadn’t sent the drone.

“When the Outbreak hit, a lot of us got orders to head to Indianapolis, but it was a
mess there.  We got overrun and lost over half our guys.  Our colonel was killed along with most of our senior officers.  I was with a group that decided to pull back to Atterbury.  We were there for a month waiting for orders.  A  bunch of guys deserted - going home to be with their families.”

Mike nudged him again with his M-16.  “I don’t need your life story.  How’d you get here?”

“When orders didn’t come, a few of the guys needed to get on the move.  So we grabbed some stuff and started moving east.  Our goal was to head to D.C.  Maybe we’d learn something there.”

“So, you’ve been heading from town-to-town taking what you want,” Mike said.

“Not at first.  At first the people who were still alive gave us things because we helped clear out the zombies but as time passed people were less willing to part with things.  Our Sergeant said we’d have to ask more forcefully.”

“You stole from people,” I said.

His head turned in my direction, his hand still to his face.  “Yes,” he said, but his voice was soft.

“Well, you made a big mistake coming here because we’re going to fight back,” Mike said.  “We have some old people and kids back in our church. So help me God, if you’ve hurt or injured any of those people, I’m going to make you wish you’d never been born.”

Mike stood, “Grab his gun.
”

I reached over and picked up the man’s M-16 as Mike checked the rest of the men, picking up ammunition and anything else he thought we’d need.

“Hey, listen guys,” the injured soldier said staggering to his feet.  “I don’t think I can see anymore.  A piece of shrapnel hit me above my eyes.  If you can guide me to the street maybe I can talk to our Sergeant and convince him to move on.”

“The time
for talking has come and gone,” I said.  Something started to boil inside me again as I thought of the people in the church.  An image of Naveen huddling in terror flashed into my mind.

The man struggled to stand up, swaying back and forth, unsteady on his feet.  “No, I can convince him.  I know I can.”

“Just shut-up!” I shouted. 

Mike shot me a look, but I ignored him.  The injured soldier stumbled forward, one hand to his face and one stretched out in front of him feeling the air.  He made it a couple steps
, but tripped over a broken desk and fell back to floor letting out yelp of shock.   

“Come on.  We can work this out,” he said getting to all fours.  “I know we can.”  He made it back to his feet and was maneuvering slowly between the broken desks and other debris.  Someone fired another round of shots outside.  I looked out the window and saw several large holes in the second floor of the church.  I guessed those were a product of their heavy.  I saw some movement on the roof and then someone took several shots down onto a target off to the west.   A withering attack of return fire flew
toward the roof.  I only hoped whoever was up there was able to get away from the hail of bullets.

My mind went to the little kids back in the church.  Again, Naveen’s face floated to the surface and something in me started to churn.  The plan was if we were under attack, they’d be moved to the back of the basement into the civil defense shelter.  I saw those kids down there -- scared witless, crying, waiting for the attack to stop.  Waiting to know if they were going to live or die.  Then my feet were moving.  I dropped my gun and was on
the injured soldier in three steps, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and the back of his belt.  Lifting him off the ground, I pushed him toward the windows, his feet stumbling along.

“Joel, what are you doing?”  Mike asked.

“Hey, hey, what’s going on?” the soldier asked, his alarm rising.

I didn’t answer either of their questions but just kept moving the soldier ahead of me.   He dropped his hand from his face and I saw a bloodied and blackened hole in his forehead just above his eyebrows, blood seeping out of it. 

“Wait, wait,” he shouted, his arms flailing about.  Maybe he felt the chilled night air drifting in from the windows.  Maybe he knew what I was going to do.

“Joel, don’t do this,”
Mike said, moving toward me, but we both knew he’d never make it in time.

The soldier started to dig in his feet, resisting my forceful push, but I was surging forward, picking up speed.

“No, no, no,” the soldier said.

A voice inside me was saying, “Yes, yes, yes.”

We’re were less than five feet from the window when the soldier went limp in an attempt to stop what was about to happen, but the combination of my anger and adrenaline gave me the strength to keep him upright and moving.  As we reached the window I hoisted him up and propelled him into the air, his arms pin wheeling trying to find purchase on something to stop his flight, but coming up empty. 

He screamed on his way to the ground, hitting the concrete below with an unforgiving thud.  When I looked back at Mike, there was a strange set in his expression.

The next thing I knew bullets were tearing into what was left of the window.   Shards of glass flew into the ceiling above me, bringing bits of ceiling tile down on me like confetti.  I fell away from the window and rolled to the protective cover of the wall.

“Let’s get out
of here,” Mike said as more shots filled the room.

I picked up my gun and
we crawled out of the room.  When we hit the hall a voice came from Mike’s walkie-talkie.  “Foraging Party One, come in.  Foraging Party One, come in.”  It was Greg’s voice.  “We need covering fire to get into position.  Can you provide this cover?”

Mike brought the walkie-talkie to his mouth and said, “I think we can.  What do you need and when?”

“We’re nearly in position,” Greg said.  They must have been close to the library.  “If you can give us some cover from the big gun, we can take it out.  Can you do it in five?”

“Yes, I think so,”
Mike said.  “We’ll report back when we’re there.”

CHAPTER 27

Face-Off

We ran by Kara and she fell in behind us as we made our way to the west side of the building and down to the first floor.  She tried to ask questions, but I waved her off.  We ran into one wandering zombie, and I took it out with two hits from my rifle.  As we passed by the windows I could see a lot of the undead roaming the streets -- more than we had seen in a couple months.  I also saw soldiers shooting at them and thought that maybe, for once, these undead assholes might be of benefit to us as a distraction, but knew that the truth of the matter was that the dead took no sides.

When we
reached a large bank of windows we could see the MAV with its intimidating gun.  There was a group of around fifteen to twenty soldiers fanned out around it.  Adding to their arsenal was a Humvee with a soldier working a machine gun, cutting the undead into bite size pieces with its deadly firepower.  It churned out rounds at a dizzying pace and filled the night with its loud pounding.

Mike grabbed me and pulled me close, “We have to take out that machine gunner.  If they spot Greg and his men, they’ll be dead in no time with that
gun.”  He stopped and looked at Kara.  “We could really use your marksmanship.  Will you help this time?”

A battle raged inside her as she contemplated the gravity of her decision.  It took a good ten seconds before she nodded her head. 

“Okay, we could use you up on the second floor,” Mike continued.  “Take a couple shots and move.  They’ll bring hell down on you fast.  Joel and I will do what we can from this floor.  We’ll wait for your shot before we start firing,” he said to Kara and then looked to his wristwatch. “It’s five minute till, you start shooting on the hour.  Now go.  Greg needs us or else he’s dead meat.”

Just as I turned to go, a voice broke the silence in a big way.

“You inside the church!”  The voice boomed -- obviously through a bullhorn or some amplification system.  A few shots sounded.

“You people in the church!”  The voice filled the air again.  “Stop firing.”

Maybe it was through force of will or just serendipity, but the shooting stopped.

Collectively, the three of us edged toward the window.  The s
oldiers who had been firing took cover behind the Humvees, the MAV, and wherever else they could.

“This is staff-sergeant Kurtz again.  This has gone on long enough.  I’m ordering you to stand down.”

It took a moment to locate him.  He was poking his head out of a front port on the MAV.  I could only see a partial view of his shoulder and the side of his head due to a soldier blocking my eye line.  He was smart enough to not expose too much of himself.

“Until now, we have
lain back, but if this goes on much further we will bring our total force down on you.  No one wants that, least of all you.”

A palpable tension hung
in the air.  The church looked severely battered and ready to collapse on itself with several gaping holes in the exterior.  The smoke from the house fire down the block enveloped the bottom floor like an ominous wreath.

A zombie tottered into the no-man’s land between the soldiers and the church.  Its head swiveled in a mechanical way from the church to the soldiers and back as some rudimentary thought process calculated which way to go for food.  Since the soldiers were visible, it decided the least path of resistance an
d headed for the open field for food.  It made it five steps before an unseen soldier tore it to pieces with an automatic weapon.  Arms, legs, and viscera sprayed into the street where the thing had once stood.

“As you can see, we have overwhelming fire power,” Kurtz said.  “It’s only a matter of time before we take down your walls.”

“And then what?” an amplified voice responded from the church.  It was Roger.  None of us could make out where he was as his amplified voice echoed off the buildings.

“That’s an ending none of us want,” Kurtz responded.

“So, what are your terms?”  Roger asked.

“We are offering you the chance to come out and lay down your weapons.  The men will come out into the street, followed by the woman and children.  We will not harm any of you
--,”

Roger cut him off.  “Whoa, whoa, whoa there.   You’ve got this all wrong.  We wanted to know your terms of surrender, not ours.”

Kurtz began to laugh.  It was deep resonant laugh that needed no amplification.  It filled the area for at least twenty seconds, the echo seemed to get louder and then faded away.

“That’s ric
h,” Kurtz said. “You obviously have a different and deluded view of the situation.  Your only choice is an unconditional surrender.  I’ll give you one minute to comply.”

Kara asked, “Shouldn’t we surrender?  We can’t win in a fight with all those soldiers.  I mean
--.”

Mike put up a hand to interrupt.  “They’re not going to just let us surrender peaceably.  Look there and there.”  He pointed into the fading twilight.  “There’s two groups of soldiers set-up ready for our men to come out.  As soon as they do, those soldiers will cut them down like dogs.”

“Maybe they’re just covering themselves?” Kara asked.

Mike turned to her with an intensity I had never seen him display, “We’ve drawn too much of their blood. I think he’s overstating their strength.  Only a few of their soldiers are firing on automatic.  That MAV could take down those walls in less than a minute. I’m guessing they’re hurting for ammo.”

“But --,” Kara tried in break in, but Mike would have none of it.

“There is no ‘but.’ They will take no prisoners unless it’s choice woman and maybe some kids.  Roger knows this.  So does Greg.”

“So, there’s no way out of this for us, but to fight?”  I asked.

“Pretty much
,” Mike said.

“Time is up,” Kurtz said.  “You need to start coming out now or else we will be forced to fire on you without restraint.”

“Nuts,” was the single response from Roger.

“What?”  Kurtz seemed confused.  

“Don’t know your military history, do you? The one hundred and first were surrounded by Germans in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.   When the Germans sent for terms of the U.S. troop’s surrender, the U.S. commander responded with a single word -- Nuts.” 

“So, that is your answer?”

“Yes.”

“So be it.”

Never in my life have so few words meant so much.  I felt my head go light with the tension, but then it abated as I got ready for what we had to do.  I raised my gun to fire, but Mike pushed it down.  “Not yet.  Kara you need to get into position, and I’m going to move over there,” he said as he pointed at a room across from school drop-off area.  “We ready?”
              Both Kara and I nodded. 

“Kara, you shoot and then you need to move.”

Kara hesitated and then moved off into the dark, her footfalls diminishing as she slipped into the darkness of the building.  Mike talked me through his idea.  It seemed easy enough when you considered we were taking on a small army at a 10 to 1 ratio.  He would move to a room further back in the building, and I would stay in the tiny administrative office.  We would both wait for Kara to take out the machine gunner, giving us a limited triangulation.  At least that’s what Mike called it.  My military tactics consisted of playing with G.I. Joes as a kid.

I pushed
a large metal desk against the window and used it as a prop to steady my aim.  Most of the blood lust I felt earlier had drained out of me, and my legs were starting to shake from both fear and fatigue.

The sounds of the
firefight brought the undead out of the houses and hills and down onto the battlefield.  The soldiers had their hands full with zombies arriving on the scene along with the sporadic firing from inside the church.  If the soldiers opened up with the big gun, any advantage we had would be over. 

The zombies started to
group-up and move in on the soldiers, forcing them to pull back into a tighter circle around the Humvee.  Firing became a little more frantic now that a throng of undead bearing down on them.  The sheer number of zombies made shooting easy, but those same numbers were also getting close to tipping the scale in favor of the undead.

I peered across the student drop-off area and towards the room that Mike said he would use.  Something moved in there
, and I hoped like hell it was him and not a zombie.

I checked my watch.  O
ne minute to go.  I watched the second hand tick down the seconds when a single shot rang out above me.   

The machine gunner stopped delivering his blistering fire and clutched his shoulder.  Not being able to fire anymore, he ducked down into the Humvee.  Kara hadn’t taken the kill shot, but the objective was met, the machine gun was out of commission.  The ground soldiers were
still fully functional, and several of them turned and blasted away at the second floor.  I hoped that Kara had taken Mike’s direction to heart and had run out of the room after taking her shot.  Broken glass showered down on the street from above me.

The soldiers firing at Kara’s pos
ition suddenly started to take panicked evasive movements as bullets assailed them from behind.  The sounds of these shots came directly across from me, and I saw the muzzle flash from the barrel of Mike’s gun.  Three soldiers fell to the ground immediately.  A part of me felt revulsion at killing the living, but another part of me reveled in taking retribution on these mercenary assholes who thought they’d roll over us and take what was ours.  I didn’t count the ones that fell after I started firing, but quite a few did and the rest fled from the open ground, moving either behind the Humvee or the MAV.  Those that found cover started to return fire and the windows of the room where Mike was shattered inward from the spray of bullets.

In the chaos of the firefight I failed to notice that a new gunner had replaced the one Kara had taken out
.  I looked just in time to see him train his gun in my direction.  The windows around me exploded inward sending glass over my head as I ducked beneath the desk.  The bullets hitting the wall sounding like someone was using a jackhammer on it.  The room filled with a fine powder as the wall was shredded by the impact. 

The barrage moved away from me to the
room where Mike was firing.  I’m guessing he shot at the gunner and that’s what drew the firing away from me or else I would have likely been churned into a bloody pulp.  I snatched a quick peek and watched as the bullets tore into Mike’s position, and I hoped and prayed that Mike got out of the way in time.  

I popped up, gopher
-style, fired off a couple shots in the direction of the Humvee, but the gunner swiveled the gun my way and opened up.  I laid flat on the ground and felt pieces of glass and debris falling onto my body.  The gunner swiveled back to Mike and when I looked up, I saw the soldiers, who so recently had been in retreat, start to advance on us.  As long as the machine gun was in action, we were not going to get anything done and would most likely be dead in a few short minutes.

I poised myself for a mad dash out of the room when the firing stopped.  I
raised my head again and saw the machine gunner lying over the side of the Humvee, half of his head blown away.  Kara must have seen the necessity of deadly force, but something in me mourned the loss of her convictions in the face of a no-win scenario. 

I despised this world we now lived in.  I hated it for what it did to us, taking away any of what we were and what
we believed in a piece at a time.

With the machine gun out of action again, Mike was free to open up on the advancing soldiers.  The soldiers scattered wildly, taking cover behind whatever they could.   I brought my gun up and fired, too.  From a quick estimate, I’d say we just reduced their functional army in half.   I started wondering if they might contemplate a pull-out
, when I got my answer.  The turret on the MAV started to rotate in my direction again. 

Mike had stopped firing.  In the moonlight, I saw that he had the walkie-talkie to his ear.   He looked
in my direction and motioned frantically, waving his free arm in a downward gesture, telling me to take cover. 

I looked back at
the MAV and its terrifying gun.  The world started slowing down again -- moving in millisecond intervals.  Off to the left, I heard a whooshing noise and a stream of light appeared out of nowhere, streaking toward the MAV.  Simultaneously, the barrel of the MAV brightened to supernova proportions and that was last thing I fully and distinctly remember.  My world filled with light and sound, brightness overwhelming me and the sound filling my ears to such a point I thought my eardrums might burst.  The concussive force of the blast knocked me off my feet and partially out of the doorway which probably saved my life as the ceiling collapsed.  My head hit the floor and was filled with a light show of orange, yellow, and red before it was swamped with a tsunami of black.

While drifting in the dark waters of semi-consciousness, I felt something tugging at my shoulder.  Something insistent to the point of desperation.  As my systems shut down completely, I hoped it wasn’t a zombie.