Books of the Dead (Book 1): Sanctuary From The Dead (7 page)

CHAPTER 10

The Bus

We were outside and sprinting towards the SUV when a noi
se stopped us in our tracks. 

I looked to Mike and he stood stock still, tr
ying to locate the source of this new sound, his rifle up and ready.  Aaron had a puzzled look on his face.  Brandon had settled in behind a car with his assault rifle aimed back at the house.

Before the end of the world as we knew it, the noise would have just been another one of the many background sounds that we took for granted and ignored.  In our dead new world it was such an unfamiliar noise, it was almost surreal. 

Mike listened intently, his eyes narrowed to slits.  I swiveled back the way we had come and waited for whatever was heading our way.

The noise was getting closer, mechanical and rhythmic. 

Our SUV was parked on Offnere, which was a north/south street and the noise seemed to be coming from the south, but in the direction of Brown Street.  Brown paralleled Offnere, but was east of where we were. 

T
ensions were high as we waited, but there really wasn’t a lot of time for suspense as the source of the sound made its appearance.

It was a bus.  A yellow school bus to
be more specific and it was headed north on Brown.

When the bus passed by the intersection at the end of the street, Brandon said, “What the fuck?”

I felt the same, but didn’t verbalize it (a first for me). 

Things got weirder when whoever was driving the bus hit the
brakes.  Hard.  Tires screeched and brakes locked up.

The bus
then backed into the intersection and stopped.  The driver was too far away to be anything more than an indistinct figure.  There were a number of forms in passenger seats behind him.

The bus idled there for several seconds and our group stood motionless. 

Aaron took three steps in the direction of the bus before Mike said, “Wait.”

“Why?” Aaron asked.

“Because we don’t know who they are and we have a mission.”

“I think we should check it out,” Brendon chimed in.

“This isn’t a democracy,” Mike said.  “Logan needs us.”

B
efore we could put it to a vote, the bus broke Robert’s Rules of Parliamentary Procedure and took the decision out our hands by driving away.

“Should we go after it?”  Aaron asked.

“No, we need to get to Logan and his team,” Mike said as we ran for our truck.

CHAPTER 11 

Marauders

The radio chatter was chaotic for those first few minutes as we sped north towards the foraging party.  Logan was the leader of the group and reported they were pinned down in a house by multiple attackers.  At least one of their party was badly wounded and out of action.  Another one was wounded but was still able to shoot.  That left only Logan and a woman named Jo in full combat ready condition.  The news stunned everyone in the SUV into silence. 

Greg broke in several times,
letting Logan know that he was prepping another crew, but it would be twenty minutes before they even left the building.  The subtext was obvious.  Our team would have to provide the first on-the-scene support (and maybe the only support). 

We always knew
that this was a possibility.  While weren’t used to interlopers, we were no longer taken by surprise when a group wandered into our territory.  Some of the parties were low-key, get-in-and-get-out-as-fast-as-they-could with whatever they could grab.  They were dubbed “Nomads.’  Others came locked, cocked, and ready for battle.  We called them Marauders.

Only one of these marauding groups had come into town since the Outbreak.  They
en the bridge entered the city in an intimidating convoy over leading from Kentucky.  Their vehicles were covered with homemade armor and they brought weapons.  Lots of them.  They had one Army Humvee with a .50 caliber machine gun and all the other vehicles were filled with heavily armed people.  They camped out one day in the downtown area and fortunately didn’t venture our way.  On the way out of town, they shot up a couple houses and killed off a number of zombies for us.  In a “town hall” meeting, Greg said that we would have been no match for them.  It was a sobering reminder that while the undead were a fearsome enemy, the living could be real sons of bitches, too.

We had no idea what we were driving into.  Logan had his hands full trying to survive so he couldn’t tell us much.  What we did know was sketchy at best.  There were two vehicles and anywhere from eight to
twelve armed.

“Can’t we
go faster?” Brandon asked.

“No!  We don’t know what we’re getting into.  can’t drive into
,” Mike said.  “My platoon tried that in Somalia in ‘93 and we almost got wiped out.  These aren’t the undead.  These guys will shoot back.  We’ll recon the situation first but rest assured, if things getting any worse, any faster, and we’ll do what we have to do.  Everyone put your weapons on auto.  Joel, set mine.”

The interior of
the SUV filled with the clicking sound of guns being switched from single shot to automatic.  Mike navigated in and out of abandoned cars, pushing the SUV along at a good clip.  As we got closer, we saw a few zombies heading in the direction of the gunfire.  One stumbled in front of us and Mike did nothing to avoid it.  The impact with our right front fender sent the thing sailing against a picket fence, smashing down a section of the fence and impaling it.  When I looked back, its arms pin-wheeled helplessly in the air as it tried in vain to free itself.

We drove for a couple more blocks.  The gunfire was closer now and Mike brought the SUV to a full stop.  We listened intently trying to pinpoint the origin of the shots.

“It sounds about two blocks away in that direction,” Mike said pointing to the west.  “Everybody out.”

Mike led us around to the back of the SUV where he opened the hatch and started handing out extra goodies.  Each us got two grenades and two extra magazines.  He handed Brandon a walkie-talkie.  

“We don’t need to do a John Wayne,” Mike said. “We just need to get them off Logan and his team.  Understood?”  He took each one of us in with a hard stare.  “Let’s go in as quietly as possible so that we have the element of surprise.  If you see any zombies, you know what to do.  We’ll head in as a group, but we may need to split up.  Let’s go.”

And we headed off to war.

“They’re just a bunch of rednecks with rifles and shotguns,” Brandon said
, as we looked from behind a row of evergreen hedges in a yard a block away.

“That doesn’t make them any less dangerous,” Mike said.  “Logan already has two people down.”

Logan and his team were holed up in a two story red brick house.  Most of the windows were shot out and the bricks showed evidence of gunshot damage.  We could see three groups of men with weapons huddled behind cars along the street. 

One of the men popped up, took a quick shot at the hous
e, and then ducked. 

There was a flash of movement from a second floor window
.  A shot rang out and a bullet clunked into the car by the redneck shooter.  A man behind a car down the street jumped up and fired three shots at the window and then ducked down.

“Someone in their group knows something about tactics.  They’re trying to draw Logan’s team out with those potshots so that another team can tak
e out the source,” Mike said, his face tight.

Brandon brought his weapon up and started to aim it,
but Mike pushed it down.  “Not yet.” He pulled up the walkie-talkie.  “Foraging Party, this is the Clearing Party,” Mike said.  “Foraging Party, we are thirty minutes out.  Hold tight, we’re coming with reinforcements.”

Aaron gave Mike a puzzled look.

“I can’t give away our proximity in case the rednecks are listening,” Mike said dropping the walkie-talkie from his mouth.  “We’ve worked out some basic codes and Logan knows that means we are here and not to shoot at us.  From what I can see they have three groups.  They could also have some men behind the house.”   

So, what’s the game plan?” Brandon asked.  “We going to smok
e’em?”

“We could do that.  They certainly didn’t show our people any mercy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to.”

“I vote no mercy,” Aaron said. 

“Me, too.  We have them dead to rights,” Brandon added.

“What do you think, Joel?”  Mike asked swinging the weight of the decision to me. I felt all of it.  The lives of these men hinged on what I said.

“I’m not saying mercy, but we don’t have to slaughter them, do we?  Can’t we just scare them off?”

“That’s an option, but they’d still be armed and dangerous and on our turf,” Mike said.  “We can’t get into a drawn out debate here, but I’m with Joel.  We don’t have to kill them, but they can’t leave here without suffering some damage.  Real damage.  And they can’t leave here as armed as they came in.  Ultimately, they have to know coming back into our town is not an option.”

There was another exchange of fire between the house and the men on the street.

“See what I mean?” Brandon said pointing towards the house.  “I don’t like it.  Any one of them is a danger to us.  Letting them go is a potential future threat.”

“These aren’t terrorists.  They’re some rednecks with guns trying to survive.  We don’t even know how this shootout started,” Mike said.

“Does it matter?”  Brandon asked.  “Our people have been shot and may be dead.”

Brandon’s comment was punctuated when another redneck took a couple shots at the house.

“We don’t have time for this,” Mike said, his expression hardening.  “We’re not going to wipe them out unless we have to.  That’s final.  We don’t risk ourselves or our people in the house, but we’re not going on a killing spree.  We together on this?”  I could tell that Brandon wasn’t happy with the decision, but he conceded to the chain of command.  Aaron nodded his agreement, too. 

“They have us out numbered
,” he continued, “But we have better weapons and surprise on our side.  We’re going to drive them away.  We need to get their weapons, if possible, but getting our people out of the house safely is the priority.  If you feel in danger, or if you think our people in the house are in danger, do what you have to.”  He laid out a quick plan that had the four of us dispersing strategically to make our numbers look bigger than they were.  We synced our watches and decided on a time we would commence our attack.

The plan had us spaced out along the street with Mike and I just a house apart.  Brandon and Aaron followed a similar strategy only a few houses down from the rednecks.  I wasn’t really sure if I was to fire on the rednecks, over their heads, or try to wound them.  Things were just too vague and the whole situation could spin out of control in seconds.  We did the best we could and hoped the situation didn’t turn to shit.  Too bad it did.

CHAPTER 12

Shootout

My watch ticked away counting down the seconds until we were to start shooting.  Sweat rolled down my back and the muscles across my body were so tight I thought they might burst out of my skin.   It was bad enough to fight zombies
, but now I found myself in a paramilitary militia.

Th
e one thing I was sure of was I wouldn’t be the first one to fire unless someone fired on me.  Fortunately or unfortunately, Brandon had an eager trigger finger. 

I had a line of sight on Mike who was hiding
behind a bush at the corner of the house next to me.  I checked my watch again and it was time.  I looked to Mike as he used the walkie-talkie to notify Logan that we were ready to attack.

My prediction was correct.  Off to my left a burst of shots rang out before
even Mike lowered the walkie-talkie.  A shower of bullets tore into the car a group of rednecks were using for cover.  At least one of the rednecks went down while the others scattered.   As they ran for cover, someone from inside the house started firing and two more of them went down. 

So much for this not being a slaughter.

Mike fired, but his seemed shots targeted the car in front of our position and none of the rednecks were hit.  After witnessing what happened to the other group, our group of rednecks couldn’t decide whether to shit or go blind.  I’d have to say that I couldn’t blame them.  One moment, you have the upper hand, the next, you’re running for your life.   

The third group
panicked and scattered in different directions.  One man climbed under a pickup truck and two others ran towards a house next to where Logan’s team was holed up.  One of the men was hit, but continued to limp for cover.

If something didn’t change soon, this was going to be a bloodbath.

“We have you surrounded!”  My words even surprised me.  Where they came from I had no idea.  Maybe an old cop show on TV?  Maybe out of sheer desperation?  Whatever their source, the shooting stopped and no one moved. 

“You need to drop your weapons and come into the open,” I shouted.  I peeked over at Mike, and while he looked somewhat bewildered, he made a hand gesture, urging me on.  

Nothing happened, which was both a good and bad thing.  No one fired, but the rednecks didn’t move.  It was a proverbial Mexican stand-off.  They had been in control when they had Logan’s team pinned and now they were boxed in with enemies both in front and in back of them. .

“We have you outnumbered and outgunned,” I shouted again.  “If you don’t surrender, none of you
will get out of here alive.”  I wasn’t sure I didn’t believe what I just said, but at that point, I didn’t have to back it up. 

“The clock is ticking,” I yelled.  I looked to Mike and he shrugged. 

The stand-off continued.  My bluff was just that.  We had the advantage now because they were pinned down, but if they dispersed then we would have a whole new ball game in which we were outnumbered.  We had to end this now.

I aimed at the window of the truck the one
guy had crawled under and squeezed off a single shot.  My aim was getting better because the window shattered sending a shower of glass tinkling off the asphalt. 

Before things could escalate, I said, “That could have just as easily been the man under the truck rather than the window.  We have thirty men surrounding you now.  All of them have their sights trained on each of you.  You have ten seconds to come out and surrender your weapons or we will open fire.”

“How do we know you won’t shoot us?” A shout came from the shadows of a house.

“Because if we had wanted to do that you’d already be dead,” I shouted wondering what movie script I was pulling my dialogue from
, but it was working so I went with it.

A clock ticked inside my head, counting down from ten and when it reached
two a voice broke the silence, “I’m coming out.  Don’t shoot.”   A scruffy looking man in jeans and dirty shirt limped out into the street.  He held his rifle held high over his head.  Sometimes it only takes one, but we had to wait to see if the rest of them capitulated. 

A shout came from beneath the truck, “I’m coming out, too.”  A shotgun skidded out from under the truck and the
man followed.  The tide turned with all of the men coming into the open and setting down their guns.  A sense of relief washed over me as my blood pressure dropped back down into a more reasonable range. 

I think we were waiting until we had a high degree of certainty that all of them were out and in the op
en before taking our next move.  What that next move was, I had no idea.  I had never taken captives before.  I looked to Mike for direction and he motioned for me to step out.  I guess I had started this mess and I had responsibility to see it through.

I stood up, my knees cracking, and stepped into the yard, my weapon held down but at the ready.  “Is this all of you?”

A man with a long beard stepped away from the group and said, “That’s all of us except for Rory and our other two men that are shot.  Rory’s shot up pretty bad, so we left him where he was.”

I moved slowly towards the group and caught motion out of corner of my eye.  Mike was also on the move toward the group and I felt a whole lot better.

“What do you want us to do?” the bearded man asked.

“Stay where you are,” Mike said stepping out
of his cover.  Quite noticeably, he had his weapon up.  He must have finally sensed that I was in way over my head and it was time for an adult to take control of the situation.  “Everyone, interlace your fingers and put your hands on your heads and down on your knees.”

They complied, going to their knees with their hands to their heads.

“Aaron, Joel, pat them down for side arms,” Mike said.

We took
thirteen handguns off of nine men.  We also retrieved three large bowie knives, two machetes, two swords and a shiny new hand axe.  Amazing, really.   Great minds think alike. 

We
tossed the bladed weapons into the yard of one of the houses, but held on to all the guns.

Everything was going swim
mingly until Logan burst out the house.  His face was pinched and suffused with anger as he surged across the street like a blood red tide.  When he got behind the lead redneck he drew his M16 back and brought the stock down on the man’s shoulder sending him to the ground with a grunt.  The other men stirred, fear coursing through their eyes, looking like they might bolt at any moment. 

J
ust a minute ago the tone was tense, but controlled.  Now the situation was now starting to spin into explosive chaos.  Logan stood over the man ready to take another whack at him. 

By now,
Brandon and Aaron were out of hiding and standing guard over our prisoners.  My concern was whether any of our guys might start shooting the rednecks if they made a run for it.  I’m sure that was a default for Logan in his current state of mind.  Shooting unarmed men in the back wasn’t in my job description.  With each passing second I was afraid things would go that way -- fast.

I looked to Mike, but he seemed at a loss. 

“Logan, stand down,” a voice boomed from behind us. 

Everyone looked as Greg and four more of our men, armed to the teeth, stepped from between two houses.  I saw Kara standing a few feet behind them holding a rifle. 

Logan shot Greg a look that smoldered, but stepped away, his breathing ragged and fast.  “These guys shot Lenny and Sam for no reason.”

“We did not,” the lead redneck said from his place on the pavement.  “We were looking for supplies and had every right to be here
, same as you guys.”

I’ve always thought it was best to make your case from a position of strength
, not sprawled face-first in the street with an angry man holding a gun pointed at your head.  Call me crazy.  Logan hauled back and kicked the man in the leg.  The man screamed in pain, pulling himself into a fetal position to protect himself from what he probably thought would be a vicious beating.

“Logan,” Greg said as
he closed the distance between them.  “This isn’t how we need to handle this.” 

“How should we handle it
?  Lenny is up there maybe bleeding to death and Sam can only use one of his arms right now.”

“We don’t beat unarmed men,” Greg said.

“Well, they weren’t unarmed until a couple minutes ago,” I said and regretted it almost before the words left my mouth.  Greg shot me a look, and I shut up.

“They are unarmed now.  How bad is Lenny?”

“Bad,” Logan responded.

“Ben, go bring Doc Wilson up and have him take a look at Lenny.  Kara can check Sam.”  The tall lean man named Ben
did as he was told, “Logan, I need you to calm down, and I need a full situation report.  Mike?”

“We have all the attackers here.  A couple of their guys are wounded,” Mike said pointing to a yard where one man was laying and another sitting up, his face smeared with blood.  “I think one is dead over at that house,” he added, pointing at a ranch house down the street.

Greg’s face fell at this news.  Questions and regrets played across his face like an ominous front of storm clouds.

“And we’re not alone in town,” Mike added. 

“That’s obvious,” Greg said.

“No, we saw a bus.  A school bus.  It was heading up Brown
Street.  We would have checked it, but we needed to move.”

“Well, we knew
we weren’t the only group of survivors still in town.  We know there’s a small group on Two-Mile hill.”

“I got a bad feeling about that bus,” Mike said.

“We’ll deal with that when we have to,” Greg said.

“We’ve got Zs,” Aaron called out.  Three zombies
appeared, shambling down the street heading for the yard with the two wounded rednecks.

“They’re going to eat our guys,” one of the captive rednecks yelled.  He was halfway to his feet, his body caught in indecision, not able to decide which was more frightening: us or the zombies. 
Two more zombies stumbled around the side of house.  

“Okay, here’s how’s this is going to go,” Greg said.  “We’ll let you go and you’ll leave and never come back.  Okay?”

One of the rednecks stood and moved forward to pick up his gun, but Mike moved to block him.  “No.  We’re stupid, but not that stupid.  Your weapons stay with us.”

“But we’ll never
to get past the undead,” he said pleadingly.

“That’s the price you pay for coming into someone’s turf and shooting them,” Logan said leaning into the redneck’s face.  “My commander is being nice
, but if I see any of you here or anywhere near here, I’ll shoot you dead.  Without hesitation, without a second thought.  You got it?”

The man gulped and nodded.

“Now, go,” Logan said.

They were hesitant at first, but most of the redneck crew got to their feet and started running.  Three of them went to help their wounded. 

“Jessie’s dead,” one of them called out, standing over the body of one of the fallen rednecks.  He was a big guy with a scraggly beard.  “You fucking assholes killed my brother.”  His voice was hoarse with emotion.  “I’ll get you.  I’ll get all of you for this,” he screamed pointing a shaking finger in our direction.  Logan started to raise his weapon, but Greg pushed it back down.  The redneck took us all in as if he were committing all our faces to memory, then turned and ran between two houses.

“Hey, hey guys, we’ve got more Zs,” Brandon said.  Four more zombies were coming down the street.  The group closing
in on us was starting to get scary.

“
We don’t need to be so quiet.  Shoot them,” Greg said.

Brandon had a field day in the
ten minutes we worked to get Lenny and Sam to safety.  While it wasn’t prohibited, it was rare when we could go on an unfettered zombie killing spree.  By the time we got our two guys into the back of the SUVs there were more than a dozen zombies in the street.  The only problem was that there seemed to be an unlimited supply as a dozen more, drawn by the gunfire, started our way. 

When we got back to the church, Doc Wilson did his best to patch them up.  Lenny’s long term prognosis was good, but Sam’s arm was in bad shape.  The Doc thought he might not be able to use it again
because the bullet had taken out a hunk of muscle and tendons. 

As living, breathing humans, we were in the dramatic minority.  You’d think we’d band together against the undead, bu
t human nature, being what it is, it became a game of every man for himself.  It didn’t bode well for our long term survival as a species.