The Week of the Dead (30 page)

The red eyes focused on his throat. As the creature came closer, its burning body fell to the ground. Ethan instinctively hit it with the club. He looked down to see a bullet hole in the creature’s forehead. Josh came forward and fired one of his machine guns from the hip. “Up!” Ethan’s ears were still ringing; he only heard part of what came from Josh’s mouth. Josh looked down at him and mouthed the words “Get up!”

Reality rushed back to Ethan’s body. He heard what sounded like popcorn popping, which turned out to be everyone firing rifles. Ethan ran his hand through his hair to reveal a palm full of blood and dirt. He got to his feet. Ethan had been relatively calm during the siege, but now he was pissed. He grabbed the other rifle off Josh’s shoulder. Ethan started pulling the trigger before he had a handle on the weapon.

Runt’s cocktail had blown the APC backward creating a trail of dead rotting bodies that was quickly replaced by live rotting bodies in seconds. The gap in the wall had been doubled in width. The humans stood in a semicircle firing into the crowd of moaning bodies. “One fire, one reload!” Josh shouted as he grabbed a new rifle, handing the empty one to the man next to the ammo depot behind the sandbags. Two of the flamethrowers were positioned on the sides of the gap; they were burning bodies before they came through the hole in the wall. An Alpha climbed on the wall like a spider and came to one of the flamethrowers’ blindside. It chomped down on the human’s neck.

The human tried to remove the beast from its death grip. The human turned the flamethrower nozzle next to his head. He sprayed a beam of napalm on his attacker, burning himself in the process. The brain stem of the human boiled, locking his finger on the trigger through a muscle spasm. Ethan looked to his two o’clock to see a stream of liquid napalm aimed at the sky like a miniature volcano. He watched as the stream of bright fire began to turn right and fire against the ground. Tents and equipment began to ignite as the flamethrower from the recently deceased human continued to burn.

A tree came over the wall. It roots still had dirt on it as it collided with three human civilians pinning them to the ground. Josh fell to the ground when he saw the shadow. He looked at the humans under the tree. There was no movement. “Heads up!” someone shouted as another tree crashed against the side of a building. “What the hell is going on?” someone asked.

“They’re throwing shit!” Ethan responded. A piece of armor from the APC came through the gap like a giant Frisbee. It stuck itself in the side of a wall with a metal twang. “Fan out! Keep firing!” Ethan shouted. The man behind the sandbags was reloading rifles. Many of the men ran and hid. They didn’t want to face the demons that were destroying the wall. The creatures were upon the wall like waves on a beach. Reynolds kicked open a wooden crate. He brushed the packing aside and found an entire case of land mines.

“Land mines?” Josh called out as he read the side of the crate Reynolds was carrying. Ethan shrugged his shoulders. With a handgun in his left, Reynolds armed the land mine and threw it like he would a Frisbee. Through the gap it went. The disk bounced against a creatures face. He fired with his pistol until he heard the whizzing sound of the land mine arming. The land mine exploded on the other side of the wall. Chunks of rotting flesh flew in every direction. “Land mines!” Ethan called out as he watched Reynolds arm one. Ethan picked one up and mimicked the motions that Reynolds did. They were tossing land mines like grenades. The land mines were supposed to be used buried in the ground to eliminate whatever set off the proximity switch, but in their current situation, they couldn’t care what they were for. Josh took one and stuck it in his belt for a later use. The crate was empty. Ethan threw it at into the oncoming traffic of death coming toward him. It bounced off the chest of a zombie.

Phil and his vehicle of humans watched as they saw smoke and fire coming from the rear of the caravan. They were still sitting with idling engines, waiting for the wall to come down. Phil took solace in the sound of guns firing. He knew there were some humans left, but he felt trapped knowing one of the men held the key to the caravan leaving.

The man with the trucker hat couldn’t take it anymore. He moved his civilian vehicle, which looked like a maintenance truck, out of the single-filed line of vehicles. He revved his engine as he braced himself. Some of his passengers jumped out of the truck as he sped forward. He was going to open the heavy gate himself. He stomped on the gas pedal forcing the two-ton pickup into the metal gate. Unfortunately, the gate hadn’t been opened in fifty years and seemed to be rusted shut. After all, it was built to withstand an oncoming attack of military vehicles. The pickup truck was no match. He backed the vehicle up farther. He backed it up all the way to the back of the caravan. He met eyes with Phil and Harrison. “What the hell is he doing?” Ashley asked.

“He’s panicking!” Harrison said. The man in the trucker hat again forced the gas pedal to the floorboard and bounced the white pickup against the gate. The gate rocked back and forth with a squeak. The pickup sputtered to a standstill. The vehicle began bleeding all kinds of fluid. The window was red with the man’s blood. The airbag had deployed forcing the man’s head back and forth inside the cab. One of his passengers, a young man in a sweater, crawled out of the truck and limped to another vehicle.

The fire from the flamethrower had now spread around the camp. It went from Ethan’s one o’clock around to his five o’clock. “We need to evacuate!” he said over the microphone. Everyone shared eyes and nods. “Fall back!” Reynolds shouted. “I’m arming the gate!” Reynolds called over the microphone. “Stand clear!” he said as they were running, stopping to cover fire for others, who then did the same thing for their comrades. “Firing!” Reynolds held the clacker and pressed it. His charges worked as they were designed. He placed the charges on the frame of the gate. The concrete exploded, and the massive gate fell outward, away from the vehicles. The explosion ignited the fuel leaking from the white pickup. It ran along the gasoline trial and ignited the pickup truck, catapulting it on to another vehicle crushing it underneath. The single-file convoy was at a standstill. They couldn’t move. An armored transport vehicle blew its horns. Black diesel smoke blew in the air as the armored vehicle pushed the collapsed vehicles forward. The massive engine forced the lifeless vehicles out of the way like a barge.

“What the hell, man?” Ethan said to Reynolds.

“They weren’t supposed to be there!” Reynolds, Ethan, another human wearing a beret, and Josh stood in a line; they were firing wildly at the wave of oncoming death. Bodies fell as they were riddled with bullets. Some of the creatures broke off the attack and forced themselves into tents and buildings. Screams were heard as humans were unable to defend themselves against the onslaught. There was the familiar roar coming from inside the wall. “
The leader
,” Ethan told himself.

Vehicles were clearing out. There were gunshots and screams as creatures were throwing themselves against the fleeing vehicles. Phil’s knuckles turned white as they held on to the steering wheel. “Drive!” Tricia said.

“No,” Phil said. Tricia kicked the driver’s seat.

“Now!” Tricia screamed. Her screams were met with a fist to the face. The fist belonged to Jenna.

“Stupid bitch,” she said as she turned her attention back to the firefight happening behind them. Tricia held her bleeding nose as she got out of the vehicle and ran outside the broken wall. Her sweatpants became stained with blood as a zombie latched on to her and took her to the ground. “Told you,” Jenna said calmly.

The four men were standing in line firing. The leader broke through the gap. The dying fire caused it to roar with rage. “Holy fu—” Reynolds was cut off as the massive beast threw a car door catching Reynolds and Ethan in the chest. They crashed against Phil’s bus. Reynolds was knocked unconscious, and Ethan felt a sharp cut in his leg.

Josh watched as the beast, which looked like the Hulk on steroids and death, began knocking down more of the wall. It towered at eight feet tall. The only human features it had were a small patch of hair on its head, one bulging eye, with ten fingers and ten toes on its muscular body. Its arms were as thick as tractor tires, its legs were strong, and it made a thunderous noise as it walked. The leader thundered forward and grabbed the man in the red shirt and threw him into the crowd of rotting creatures, which tore the man apart feasting upon his flesh. Josh let out a scream of his own as he fired. His automatic rifle went dry. He tossed it at the head of the lead Alpha. “Come and get it, motherfucker!” he said as he pulled out his sidearm and emptied two magazines in quick session.

The leader picked Josh up and unhinged its jaw like a snake. It was going to eat Josh whole starting with his head. Ethan watched as Josh was being lifted in the air. “No!” he let out with what air was left in his lungs. Josh winced at the smell of the hot air coming from the beast. “Fuck you, bitch!” Josh shouted as he took out the land mine and pressed a couple of buttons. He threw it into the creature’s mouth. The creature’s anatomy told it to close its mouth. Josh screamed as he watched his hand disappear inside the razor teeth of the beast. The small head of the beast exploded sending Josh loosely against the wall.

Ethan stood up and fired with his semiautomatic pistol as he ran to Josh. Josh’s body lay limp against the wall. Ethan sent rounds into the rotting skulls of the zombies coming toward him. Ethan grabbed Josh’s wrist and dragged him toward the vehicle. When Ethan looked back, there was a long trail of blood coming from where he found Josh. When he looked down, he realized that he only brought half of Josh’s body with him.

Phil stepped out of the vehicle and fired at the oncoming zombies. “We need to go!” he said. Ethan looked down at the torso of his friend.

“N-no!” he started to cry as he watched his friend’s eyes turn red. Ethan watched as the exposed lungs of Josh’s chest slowed to a halt. “No! Josh! No!” Ethan had tears coming down his face as he watched his friend, his companion, turn into what he hated the most. Jenna grabbed Ethan’s hand and squeezed it. Reynolds came around and started firing at the crowd. Ethan watched as Josh’s body began to reanimate. It stuck its stubbly arm out, trying to grab Ethan’s pants leg. Ethan closed his eyes as he pulled out the antique revolver around his waist. “SS,” a single gunshot rang through Ethan’s mind. “DD,” he sobbed.

Jenna led Ethan into the bus and pulled Reynolds in as well. They drove over the gate and continued outside the wall. Ethan closed his eyes in Jenna’s lap. He didn’t know if it was the wound bleeding from his head or because he lost his lunch shooting his best friend’s reanimated corpse with an antique pistol that was supposed to have been Theodore Roosevelt’s that made him feel faint. He drifted off as Phil weaved around and smashed into zombies attacking the grill. “We’re going to kill them all!” Jenna whispered as she held a bandage over Ethan’s head. The fort was lost. It turned into a cloud of smoke in the distance. Phil swerved the vehicle onto a piece of asphalt and drove into the distance.

Sacrifice

Chapter 65

Thursday 0700 CST

Clarksville

J
amison and Walker were up front in the transport truck. They were followed by a group of civilian vehicles, Isaac in the ambulance, the armored car, and Devin and Erica in the SWAT van in the back followed by the Vikings on their motorcycles. Since the road was filled with obstacles, the Vikings rode in the back. This also helped to minimize anyone or anything hearing the exposed engines of the motorcycles. The modifications to the vehicles included brush guards, which were proving useful knocking cars out of the way.

Other than the revving of engines, it was a quiet drive for Erica and Devin. Erica drove as Devin was going through the SWAT weapons. He was loading magazines and cleaning the weapons. “Devin?” Erica asked.

“Yeah?” he called out from behind the half cage of the van.

“Why did you go to prison?” Her question was met with an awkward silence.

“Why do you want to know?” He started on another weapon to clean and rub down.

“Because I want to know. I want to know why my dad took care of you and why you take care of me. I want to know because the world had gone to shit, and I want someone to trust.”

“I don’t like to talk about it,” he said with a grave tone as he continued to clean the weapon. Erica looked at him. She waited a few seconds before she said anything. “I had an abortion.” She heard Devin stop in his tracks.

“What?” he spoke as she looked ahead.

“I was date-raped by a guy,” she sighed loudly. “I was in high school. I never told anyone. Later on, I took a test and found out I was pregnant. I knew what having a baby would mean, and I didn’t want it. My friend drove across state lines where I got it taken care of. I knew it was the right thing to do, but I still feel bad about doing it.” She started to whimper. Devin looked at the back of the redhead. He watched as she wiped her eyes from under the sunglasses. “That’s why I froze back at the junkyard.”

He stopped what he was doing and climbed in the passenger seat. He held the wheel as she started drying her eyes. “I was in the military.” He started. “Military police. One night, I got a call about a disturbance; something about a platoon went out drinking. When I got there, I noticed some of my fellow soldiers out back standing in a circle.” He gave the wheel back to Erica. “When I got closer, it turned out that one of the soldiers was found kissing another man. The rest of the platoon was taking turns beating the shit out of him. I looked down at him; his face was almost unrecognizable. So I walked in the circle of them, pretending to be drunk as I drank from a beer bottle. I started talking to them about the man. I asked by a show of hands who had done this to the guy’s face, because I wanted to shake their hands. Four of them, including some prick with brass on, raised their hands. So I took out my sidearm and shot them all in the knee cap. I ruined their military careers, and one guy never walked again.” Erica looked at him to see the somber look on his face.