Zomb-Pocalypse 3 (15 page)

“I was going to
take that one,” I yell to be heard over the dead, and she shrugs.

“Maybe we should
each take a section,” she suggests, and I nod.

“That’s a good
idea. I’ll take the right, you take the left, and Ryan can take the middle,” I
shout, and the other two nod to show they understand—the closer the dead get,
the louder the noise.

I aim for another
zombie, making sure I take a deep breath to help calm myself before I squeeze
the trigger, and I actually make the shot! I’m getting a lot better at shooting
under pressure.

I’m thrilled with
my kill shot, but I don’t let myself celebrate for too long. The best way to
kill more zombies is to think less and shoot more. I’m far from a great shot,
but maybe with all the walking targets, my skill level will improve, so I might
as well take the opportunity to brush up now. Later, I can pray that I never
get this kind of chance at target practice again!

“Nice shot,” Megan
calls out when I hit my forth zombie in a row and they fall to the ground to be
trampled underneath the feet of all the others. When the zombies get close,
it’s like a shockwave hitting the house. I actually feel it shudder underneath
the force of their weight, and I get a sick feeling in my tummy, imagining
myself pitching forward off this roof into the crowd below.

“Not today,” I
mutter as I creep closer to the end of the roof and start adding to my body
count. Zombie kids are usually the worst to kill, but today I don’t hesitate or
notice things like skin color, gender, or the age of those I take down. We are
fighting for our lives and our land, and we can’t stop until every last one of
them is dead.

I’m not sure how
many times I reload my clip, I’ve lost count, but the next time I go to slap a
new magazine in, I burn myself on the barrel. I let out a yelp of pain, causing
Ryan and Megan to glance at me sharply.

“I’m okay,” I tell
them. “I just burnt myself. I need to switch out my gun.” Ryan gives me a
sympathetic look, but Megan frowns.

“You should’ve
done that before now,” she corrects me, and I give her a curt nod, obviously.
This life has a harsh learning curve, and I have the burnt hand to prove it.
Megan hands me a bottle of water. I dump a little out over my singed fingers
and take a long drink from the rest. It doesn’t do anything to stop the pain,
but I don’t have time to worry about that right now. Abby hands me a fresh
Glock, and I snap the clip in and try to ignore the sting of the burn. The
coolness of the gun actually gives me a little temporary relief, but the gun
soon warms under my body heat and I’m back to square one.

I aim at an
enormous zombie who is has to be at least six foot five. It takes two bullets
to put him down, and I swallow visibly. It boggles my mind that a guy like that
turned into a zombie, while a runty cheerleader like me is still surviving—or
trying to.

My eye is drawn to
the second pickup. I’m not sure why at first, but I soon realize I’m staring at
it because it’s stopped and it hasn’t moved in a while.

I put my gun down
and squint to try and see what’s going on. “Do you think they’re okay?” I ask,
pointing to the older blue pickup parked near the lake. There is an enormous
group of zombies approaching, and Silas is rapidly firing out the window. He no
longer has his AR, though; he’s probably much smarter than me and is letting
the barrel cool down.

Megan and Ryan
stop shooting and stare out as well, shading their eyes against the sun. We
can’t hear much over the moans of the dead, but something doesn’t seem right. I
gasp when I see both truck doors get thrown open, and Silas and my dad get out
of the truck.

“What in the hell
are they doing?” Megan bursts out, but I have no idea either.

I watch them shoot
the closest zombies and take them down, and then they each pick up a handle of
the black bag and start running for their lives. They are leaving the truck!
“The truck must have broken down and stalled,” Ryan says, and we all look sick
at the thought.
Why in the hell did my dad have to pick that old beater when
there are lots of shiny new vehicles, free of problems?
I can’t help
thinking, and then instantly feel guilty—it’s too much like victim shaming.

Human beings have
no problem outrunning the dead, at least for a little while, but there are so
many zombies out there right now. I feel my muscles tighten, like I need to
spring into action and do something to help. I can’t just be a spectator to
their deaths. I turn towards the window, not sure exactly what I’m going to do,
but it most likely involves getting into the remaining car and finding some way
through that crowd to rescue them.

Ryan all but
tackles me from behind. “Let go of me,” I scream at him, trying to twist out of
his grip, but he refuses to let go.

“Don’t be stupid,
Jane,” he bellows in my ear. “You can’t go out there now; this entire house is
surrounded by the dead. You wouldn’t make it two steps off the porch.” I stop
fighting him and sink down to my knees as a feeling of utter uselessness pushes
down on me. It seems impossible that there is nothing I can do to help. I turn
back to watch the horrific scene unfold in front of me—I know Ryan wants to
tell me not to look, but he knows me better than that.

I look over at the
truck with Regg and Barry in it, but they are separated by a sea of death. I
doubt either of them even knows what’s happening. I can’t help but wish
bitterly that there was some way to get a hold of them and tell them—I haven’t
missed my cell phone this much since the beginning when everything first
started happening.

Silas and my dad
stop running for a minute, dropping the bag so they can take a rest and shoot
some of the closer zombies. I’m not sure how much my dad is contributing to
this, but Silas has his AR-15 slung off his back and is using it to punch a
considerable hole in the closer zombies.

They fire until
their clips run dry and then they start running again, reloading as they go.
“This is crazy,” I shriek as I watch them running through the knee high grass.
I doubt they will be able to keep it up for very long.

Some of the
zombies at the cabin have started to notice the easier prey farther afield and
are separating from our group. I raise my arms in the air and start screaming
until my voice is hoarse and aching. I scream as I start blasting off rounds,
and Ryan and Megan do the same, even Abby joins in the screaming. We can’t let
this group separate; it will cause too many zombie fronts to attack Silas and
my dad.

We aim at the
zombies with their backs to us, leaving, but some of them manage to slip away
and get out of range before we can take them down. There are just too many
zombies here. I can’t believe we thought we could fight all of them and
survive. We were idiots.

I don’t hear my
mom yelling at me over the screams, gunshots, and zombies until she actually
climbs out the window and taps me on the shoulder. I jump about a foot in the
air and spin with my gun up. She screams and jumps back, and I quickly drop it
when I see who it is.

“Don’t sneak up on
me like that...” I start to lecture her, but then I pause. Her face is pale and
full of tears, and she hasn’t even looked past my shoulder yet and seen what’s
going on with Silas and my dad. I get the sinking feeling that something else
is going on, and I know I’m not going to like it.

“What’s wrong?” I
ask her as she squeezes my hand between her own wildly shaking fingers. It’s my
burnt hand, but I don’t complain.

“Zombies,” she
moans in terror. “They got inside.” My heart drops so low, I doubt it’s even in
my feet anymore. It’s probably fallen off this roof and into the crowd below.

“What?” I ask
dumbly, not wanting to accept what she’s saying.

“They smashed down
the front door,” Mom reiterates. “They got inside the cabin.”

Chapter Fourteen

My mouth goes dry,
my knees start to shake, and I feel the most overwhelming urge to break down
and throw a temper tantrum. This isn’t fair, and it hasn’t been fair in a
really, really long time. We are only human after all, how can we be expected
to fight back against flesh eating monsters that don’t even feel pain? I’m not
sure if I believe in God or not, but right now I am royally pissed off at Him.

“Jane?” my mom
asks with a look of concern on her face, and I realize that I’m supposed to be
the strong one here. She is relying on me not to fall apart, because she can’t
help it herself. I try and rally my strength back around me, and I give her a
feeble smile. I’m not sure it’s enough, but it’s all I have.

I look back over
my shoulder and see that Silas and my dad are still running for their lives.
The zombies are closing in, and I feel a stab to my heart so sharp that it
takes my breath away. There is nothing I can do to help them and it’s tearing
me apart. I push past my mom and squeeze back through the window. If I can’t
help them, maybe I can still help us.

I can tell right
away that she isn’t exaggerating, by the echo of moans coming from down the
hallway. I creep forward with my gun up, ready to blast anything that tries to
eat me. I pass my bedroom and pause when I see Sunny sitting all alone on her
bed, clutching a Barbie doll, and I feel a wave of anger towards my mother. She
shouldn’t have left her here all by herself.

Sunny looks up and
sees me. I hold my finger to my lips and motion for her to come towards me
quietly. “Hi, Jane,” Sunny whispers as she presses fearfully against my side.

“Hey, Sunny
Bunny,” I whisper back, crouching down so that we are eye to eye. “I need you
to be very quiet, and brave, okay?” I ask, and slowly she nods her head. I
point to the window at the end of the hall. “You need to go out that window and
be with everyone else,” I say, even though I’m not sure if it’s the best
option, not that staying in a house full of zombies is a good idea either.

Sunny shakes her
head, her eyes luminous with tears. “I’m scared,” she admits, and I give her a
fierce hug.

“I am too, but we
both have to be brave and get through this.” I pause and take a deep breath.
“It’s scary outside on the roof,” I tell her, and she whimpers a little. “But
it’s the safest place for you.”

“Okay,” she says,
and I can’t help but marvel, not for the first time, about how resilient Sunny
is.

“When you get
outside, sit back against the wall and close your eyes,” I tell her.

“I promise,” Sunny
says. I give her one more hug and then watch as she runs down the hall towards
the window. Ryan sees her and reaches in to grab her, and I turn my back—she
will be safe with Ryan.

The moans get
louder as I creep forward, and every step is a battle of my own personal
willpower. I honestly don’t want to know if the zombies are breaching the
stairs—there won’t be anything we can do about it anyway. Once I reach the end
of the hall, I get down on my hands and knees and crawl up to the couch from Barry’s
room that we moved across the top of the stairs like my dad suggested.

I take a deep
breath and force myself to peek over the edge. The living room is filled with
zombies, and more are streaming in through the door. They moan and jostle each
other, but so far they aren’t paying much attention to the stairs, or even
looking upstairs at all. I decide not to give them a reason to change their
minds, and I slowly back up and crawl back on my hands and knees until I’m
halfway down the hall and well out of their line of sight.

I crawl back
through the window and see Sunny pressed up against the exterior of the house
like I’d told her. I give her a small smile as I quietly pull the window down
and shut it.

“What are you
doing?” my mom asks from beside Sunny.

“They aren’t
paying any attention to the stairs or us, and I want to try and keep it that
way,” I say without turning around. Right now, talking is useless and it won’t
help anything.

I was gone for
less than five minutes, but a lot can happen in five minutes when there are
zombies involved. I scan the long grass area by the lake—the last place I saw
Silas and my dad—but I don’t see any sign of them now. All I see is a huge
group of zombies shuffling around and stomping the long grass to a pulp.

The choking sound
from my throat makes Ryan spin towards me with a look of concern on his face.

“My dad...” I
start to say, and a look of understanding crosses his face.

“Shit, I’m so
sorry, Jane. I should’ve told you as soon as you came back. They made it!” he
tells me with a triumphant grin, and I’m both overjoyed and skeptical all at
the same time.

“But...how?” I
ask, not wanting to get my hopes up too high in case Ryan is just trying to
keep me focused until the threat has been eliminated.

“It was close,” Ryan
admits, the strain on his face showing me the truth of his words. “They’d just
about bit the big one when Regg and Barry finally noticed them out of the
truck. I’m surprised they didn’t wreck another truck the way they drove through
the zombies, smashing them out of the way with the Ford.” Ryan shakes his head
like he thinks they‘re nuts.

“So they made it?”
I ask breathlessly, and Ryan nods, handing me a pair of binoculars that are
sitting at his feet.

“Just in the nick
of time,” he says, and I raise the binoculars up. I can see that Silas is in
the box of the truck firing off rounds of the AR-15, and my dad is sitting in
the backseat looking extremely pale.

“I could use a
little help over here,” Megan shouts bitchily from near the edge of the roof. Knowing
Dad and Silas are safe gives me a renewed feeling of hope. Maybe we can win
this after all.

I join Megan near
the edge, and Ryan does the same, and we go back to the never-ending job of
inoculating each zombie with a shot of lead. It soon becomes mindless work,
much like washing the dishes or vacuuming the floor back in the old days. I
find my mind wandering from the task at hand. I still methodically aim and pull
the trigger, but my mind is no longer focused. I try and think about how we can
possibly rebuild any of this, and make it so another attack like this never
happens again.

The gore starts to
build up beneath the house, and the remaining zombies slip and shuffle through
the entrails of their fallen brethren. I watch a zombie plant his foot on a
fallen zombie’s face, and the force of his weigh causes the skull to cave in. I
stop shooting; it’s time to switch out my gun anyway.

“They’re rotting,”
I say, and Megan and Ryan glance over at me.

“What?” Ryan asks
finally, stopping to switch out his own pistol.

“Come on guys,
their almost all down,” Megan says with annoyance, but I ignore her.

“The zombies are
rotting,” I say again, and both Ryan and Megan look at me like I’m crazy.

“Of course they’re
rotting, they’re dead,” Megan snaps, and I begin to get annoyed with her.

“I’m not an
idiot,” I tell her, turning my back on her and walking away to the far edge of
the roof. I hear Megan snort and go back to shooting, and my annoyance level is
piqued even more.

I raise my gun and
plant a lead bullet right through the nose of a particularly ugly zombie. I
feel a shadow fall across my back and see that Ryan has followed me over here.
“What did you mean?” he asks patiently, and I’m reminded of all the reasons
that I liked him in the first place. He doesn’t act like I’m just a stupid
cheerleader, and he’s nice.

“Never mind,” I
mutter, still irritated, and I know I’m not being fair. I’m mad at Megan, not
Ryan.

“Come on, just
tell me. I walked all the way over here,” Ryan cajoles, and I feel my stomach
growl sharply. I haven’t had breakfast yet.

“Okay. I just
noticed when one zombie stepped on another, it practically disintegrated—maybe
these things will eventually just decompose completely and rot into the
ground,” I tell him in a rush.

“God, that would
be nice, wouldn’t it?” Ryan says with a smile, and I nod.

“What time is it?”
I ask suddenly when my stomach growls for the second time, and once again, I
can’t help but wish that I had a watch of my own. Ryan checks his wrist, his
eyebrows rising in surprise.

“It’s already
after one,” he tells me, and I’m surprised as well. We’ve been up here a solid
six hours shooting, and I’m exhausted and hungry.

“I’m taking a
lunch break,” I say, not caring what Megan thinks about that. I walk over, grab
my bag, and walk back towards Ryan and sit down. The shingles are cool, but I’m
so hungry I don’t care about anything else right now. I try not to think about
what kind of person it makes me that I am able to eat in the middle of a zombie
slaughter. I pull out a couple granola bars and toss one to Sunny and my mom
and then hand one to Ryan, who takes it after a moment of hesitation.

Megan glances over
at me and I hold one up to her, but she stubbornly shakes her head, or maybe
she really isn’t hungry. The smell of the dead, and the recently re-dead, is
pretty ripe. I shrug and open the granola bar for myself, barely tasting
anything as I hoover it.

I chug some water
and offer the remaining water in the bottle to Ryan. He looks at it like he’s
worried I’ll give him some kind of disease. “We used to kiss, I don’t have
cooties.” I snap, and Ryan gives me a shrug.

“That was before
Silas,” he mutters so quietly that I almost don’t hear him over the howl of the
dead, but I do. I knew he couldn’t be as cool about our non-relationship
break-up as he was pretending.

“You’ve shared
stuff with Silas before,” I say before I realize how that sounded, and I blush.
“You know what I mean,” I tell him, referring to a bottle of water they once
shared back on the road.

“I knew what you
meant,” Ryan says, letting me off the hook as he takes the bottle and chugs the
rest. He tosses it over the edge and it whacks a zombie in the head on its way
down.

“We’re going to
have to pick that up,” I remind him, and Ryan gives a small, humorless chuckle.

“I think we’ll
have a lot of other things to pick up when this is over—a bottle of water is
the least of my worries,” Ryan retorts, and I nod. He’s right. If we survive
this, we will be saturated in zombie guts.

“I think we should
get back to work,” I tell him when I catch Megan giving me the eyeballs again,
and Ryan and I both get to our feet. I personally know that I’m dragging my
feet a little as I take my place.

We shoot for
another hour, and it gets harder and harder to ignore the fact that my body is
in full blown agony. My legs are stiff from standing and balancing on the
awkwardly sloped roof for seven hours. My arms and shoulders are throbbing from
the long hours spent with my arms outstretched, and the slight kickback of the
pistol, which usually isn’t bad, is brutal after the millionth time firing it.
My one hand is asleep too, though thankfully it’s not my trigger hand. Every
time I move it feels like little needles stabbing through my digits—it’s a lot
like what I imagine acupuncture to feel like. I stop and aim at an old lady
zombie wearing a bloody shawl, and she goes down. I try shaking my hand out and
then aim my gun again, looking left and right before I realize that there are
only two zombies left.

Ryan and Megan
each take one out, and then we all stand around looking at each other in awe. I
search the field for the pickup and see that they are still dealing with a
herd, but it is a much smaller herd than this morning—probably fifty or so.

“I’m actually
starting to see a light at the end of this tunnel,” I say in surprise.

“Don’t forget the
ones in the living room,” Mom reminds me, putting a slight damper on my mood,
but still. I didn’t stop to count them, but there can’t be more than twenty
down there. I grin to myself.
When the heck did I reach the point that I
don’t think twenty zombies are a big deal?
I don’t know for sure, but I’m
pretty sure it happened sometime between last night and now.

Our neighbors, who
spent the night shooting, have obviously run dry on ammo. They are sitting
quietly on their roof, and have been for the last hour. They have a couple
zombies stubbornly hanging around, but since they stopped popping off loud
shotgun blasts and screaming, the majority of them have wandered over to the
truck, attracted by the noise and movement.

“How’s our ammo
supply doing?” Megan asks, and Abby, who was unofficially in charge of our
rounds, shrugs.

“There is
definitely a lot less than when you started,” she warns us. “I would say only
one third.” My heart sinks to hear we’ve used so much. I guess I was expecting
it, but having that ammunition stockpile was really a load off all our minds.
We’ll have to do another run to get some more, but I’m not sure how many gun
stores haven’t been completely cleaned out by survivors.

“We can’t worry
about that right now,” I say, even though that is exactly what I’m doing. “We
need to go kill the zombies in the living room.”