-30-
Danni picked up one of my .45 caliber Glock pistols. She held it like a venomous snake that might strike at any moment.
“You’re going to need to get over those feelings real quick,” I said, pointing towards the handgun. I took the gun, chambered a round and checked the safety. “There’s already one in the chamber, so when you’re ready to shoot just make sure the safety is off, point and squeeze the trigger.” I gave her a crash course in how to reload the gun and chamber a round. Danni nodded, but I could still tell she was scared.
“Don’t pull the trigger, Mom, just squeeze it,” Jared added. I was glad to see that he remembered some of the pointers I had given him. It still made me sick to think about bringing him into a shoot out, but what other choice was there? We needed to fight to stay alive. Life had always been that way, especially in prison, but it was never as crystal clear as it was now. These people were going to kill us if we didn’t kill them first.
I picked up the second Glock and tucked it into a side pocket. My Mossberg was fully loaded and my pockets stuffed with extra shells.
A few other guns hung on the rack, but I didn’t want any anyone to be loaded down. There were a few knives as well. Danni and Jared wouldn’t need those. The last thing I wanted was to see Danni or Jared in a hand-to-hand combat situation. I grabbed a push knife and buckled its sheath around my belt. The knife was shaped like a capital letter T and had a double-sided blade. Holding the handle in my fist, the blade would extend between my middle and ring fingers. The blade wasn’t good for slashing, but thrust into the side or back of someone’s head, it was deadly. I figured it would work equally as good on humans or husks.
Images of Wolverine cut through my mind. Kara loved the X-Men movies and characters, especially Wolverine. I loved watching those movies with her, Lisa not so much, but she would humor the two of us. It was just nice to have everyone together. After the movies, Kara would run around the house pretending to be a mutant hero battling monsters and evildoers, slashing them with her imaginary claws. She never could have imagined how real that scenario would be some day.
“What’s the plan?” Jared asked.
“Plan?” I muttered as I chased memories of Kara and Lisa out of my head.
“Yeah, the plan?” Jared motioned with his hand like he was talking to a toddler.
“Sorry,” I said. “There are more of them than us, so surprise is our only advantage. I’ll go out back near the Hummer. That way the side of the house and the fence will limit how many can get through at once. I want the two of you on the roof.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to hit much from up there,” Danni said.
“Don’t worry about shooting until you have to,” I said. “I’ve got something in mind so you won’t need to worry about aiming; just make sure you avoid our cars.”
The three of us quickly went over the remaining details of the plan and headed for the bunker door.
Static popped and crackled on the radio at the far end of the dial. My first reaction was to ignore it and write it off as nothing more than white noise. Then Senator Heathway’s voice came through and our entire plan went to shit.
-31-
“Lucas, Lucas, are you there?”
Senator Heathway’s voice rattled through the radio.
“I have amazing news, Lucas!”
“What is it?” I asked. “We’re kind of in the middle of a clusterfuck over here.”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,”
Senator Heathway said, still very much a politician.
“I’ll be quick then. We have made contact with a group of survivors in your area. They were taking refuge in an auto assembly plant on the outskirts of a nearby town. I let them know that there were other survivors in the area.”
“Did you tell them where you were?” I demanded.
“Of course,”
Senator Heathway said.
“Why wouldn’t we? I gave them the coordinates yesterday. These people have a skill set that could prove quite useful, plus a large group means more security for everyone. I thought you might want to try and join up with them before they head our way.”
“You moron,” I groaned.
“Come again, Lucas. I didn’t hear that last bit,”
Senator Heathway said.
“You said it was a large group,” I said. “Heathway, how many people are in this group?”
“I believe they said at least seventy,”
Senator Heathway answered.
“Lucas, why do you sound so agitated? I thought this would be good news.”
“Good news?” I said. Senator Heathway was desperate to gather survivors and rebuild some small piece of the world he understood. What he couldn’t comprehend was that just because people were alive and had a certain skill set, it didn’t mean they were good people. He was too busy dreaming of a new America and forgot about all of the problems of the old one, problems that had only been made worse by the husks and ash. “Heathway, listen to me. You do not want these people finding your group. A few of these people broke into my house and attacked my friends. I was forced to kill them and now more of them are searching my neighborhood.”
“Lucas, I’m sure this is all a huge misunderstanding,”
Senator Heathway said.
“Just let me contact them and I’m sure we can iron these wrinkles out. Everything will be fine.”
“Is planning to assault a child and woman a huge misunderstanding?” I asked. The plastic of the receiver popped as my hand squeezed it. “You will not let them know about me. You got that, Heathway? Don’t tell them anything. It’s the only way we’re going to survive this.”
“You said that they were going to assault a child and a woman?”
Senator Heathway sounded unsettled. He was beginning to comprehend the glaring mistake he made by rushing to trust these people.
“No, Lucas, that most certainly is not a misunderstanding. You have my word that I won’t contact these people again. I’ll alert the soldiers we have on patrol and tell them to be on the look out for a large group. Good luck, Lucas. Be safe.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I said.
I hoped that Senator Heathway’s word was good. We’d find out as soon as we went outside.
-32-
We snuck out the back door of my house. It opened off a small sun porch that was attached to my kitchen. When I built the sun porch, Lisa and I talked about Sunday morning breakfasts and summer nights with glasses of wine. Every plan we made was crafted with the best intentions. Like most people, we wanted to be happy and dreamt of ways to ensure that we would. Somehow life always seemed to get in the way and reality always won out. Things like happiness and love just didn’t seem to fit into reality very often. We used the sun porch to store Kara’s old bike and a million other things that never got used. After a while, we stored our dreams out there too.
The ash stopped falling from the sky about a day ago. Most of what was in the air had blown off the roof of nearby houses. A few husks stumbled through the powdery mess that covered my neighbor’s backyards. A six-foot wooden fence ran around the edges of my yard. The husks stood ankle-deep in the ash, swaying and groaning dully. When they saw us standing on the steps, they became more animated and began to beat skeletal hands against the wooden slats of the fence. I wasn’t worried about a few husks tipping the fence. It would take a lot more than what was back there. Danni was a different story.
“Don’t look at them,” I said as I tugged on the sleeve of her NBC suit. Danni was frozen. The attack had rattled her and made her even more scared. Seeing the leathery grins of the husks might be too much for her.
“Mom, I’m going out there and so are you. Lucas needs us to help him,” Jared started down the stairs. Danni blinked as if awakening from a dream.
“Wait,” she said. “Jared, wait for us.” He stopped on the last step. Danni and I walked down to meet him.
“Come on,” I walked towards the garage.
“I thought you wanted us on the roof?” Jared asked.
“I do, but not yet,” I answered.
Inside the garage, we edged around the sides of the Bronco II and made our way to the back. I grabbed four wine bottles from the recycling bins in the back. Putting the blue buckets out had been something I forgot to do before going to prison. Now, I was glad that I hadn’t.
“Hold these,” I passed the bottles to Jared and Danni. Using the hand crank, I filled each bottle two thirds of the way with gas. Shredding a rag on my bench, I stuffed the frayed fabric into open mouths of the bottles. I took the bottles, put my thumb over the top and tilted them back and forth until the rags were soaked with gas.
I grabbed an old coffee can full of mismatched screws and nails and dumped it out on my tool bench. Normally, a mess like that would have bothered me, but I didn’t have time to be anal-retentive. Attaching a few long strips of duct tape together, I pressed the sticky side into the screws and nails. Once it looked like a decent amount had been picked up, I repeated the process three more times and then wrapped the gray tape around the bottles.
“You want us to drop these from the roof?” Danni asked.
“Yes, but you’re going to need to be careful. Wait for them to get into the back,” I said. I looked at Jared. “How’s your throwing arm?”
“I guess it’s pretty good,” Jared said. “I never was a baseball pitcher or anything like that, but I can throw a bottle.”
“Hold it by the neck, light it and aim for their truck,” I said. “But wait for them to come around the side of the house so they don’t see you move to the front.”
“What about me?” Danni asked.
“Aim for something hard so the bottle breaks and try not to set the house on fire,” I said.
Back outside, I steadied the ladder while Jared and Danni climbed onto the roof. They could stay hidden on the backside. I moved the ladder back and kicked the ash around so there would be no clear sign of them up there.
Behind the Hummer, I watched the gate leading into my backyard. It creaked open and five men crept into my yard.
I took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the Hummer.
-33-
The first blast from my shotgun blew out the stomach of the lead guy. Blood and meat sprayed sideways like a morbid rose coming into bloom. The two men standing next to him were splattered with gore and stood dumbstruck. I wasn’t waiting to discuss anything. I had seen how these people did things.
I fired off two more shots as the remaining members of the group turned to run. One screamed and fell to the ground. The springs on my gate pulled it closed. It bumped against the man’s feet. It wouldn’t be long before most of this group closed in on my yard.
On both sides of the yard, the husks were getting restless. The noise and smell of blood called out to them. Sections of fence shook as they battered their desiccated frames against it.
A heavy diesel engine rumbled in front of my house. The three men that escaped from my yard must have flagged down their friends.
The steely gray of the sky flashed the color of polished amber as a cloud of fire bloomed. Screams, erratic gunfire and black smoke filled the street. Jared had a pretty good throwing arm after all.
I couldn’t stay cornered in my yard and figured the confusion out front would give me the best chance of moving undetected. The fence on the right side of my yard shook. The left side swayed a little, but not nearly as much. I jumped over the left side.
Three husks lunged as I thudded to the ground. One was missing its eye. The leathery skin looked scratched and puckered around a cavernous eye socket. A second husk dove forward. Its arms hung limply at its sides. The husk belly flopped to the ground. I kicked the third husk in the right knee and collapsed it beside its comrade.
The one-eyed husk stumbled forward, its teeth chattering and one remaining milky eye fixed on me. I pulled my T-shaped knife and drove it into the empty socket. With a twist and a second push, I felt the husk go limp. It slid off my blade and fell to the ground in an ashy cloud.
The husk with broken arms flopped on the ground like a recently landed fish. I stomped on the back of its neck and felt a satisfying
pop
. It wouldn’t be dead, but it wouldn’t be causing me any more problems either.
I turned my attention to the third husk. From the knee down, its leg hung uselessly. The husk tried to step forward, but having no recognition of its injury, collapsed to the ground. Pushing the husk’s face into the grass, I drove the blade of my push knife into the soft spot between its neck and head. The husk thrashed and then went still.
A few more shots popped from the front of my house, but I didn’t hear any aimed in my direction. A loud
whoosh
followed by a roiling black pillar of smoke bloomed on the right side of my house. They had to know that Danni and Jared were on the roof. I needed to move and draw the attention away from them.
Coming around the far side of my neighbor’s house, I got a clear view of the street. The twisted remains of a large truck smoldered in the street. Human remains, as twisted and black as those of the truck, were scattered around the wreckage. Jared had great aim.
Behind the remains of the truck a handful of people crouched and fired wild shots at the roof of my house. Jared and Danni were safe on the other side, but without the ladder, they had no way to escape. Three men crept around the edge of the ruined vehicle. They were going to try and flank Danni and Jared.
Crouching low, I moved to the side of my neighbor’s porch. A few sheets of lattice weren’t going to stop bullets, but it kept me out of sight while I edged around to the steps.
From the porch, I could see more of the street. Shell casings glittered in tufts of ash like long-forgotten nuggets of gold. My roof looked pretty terrible, not that it really mattered. After this fight was over, there was no way we could stay.
Senator Heathway said there were seventy or more people in this group. Counting the dead, I wasn’t even looking at half of their numbers. Three guys missing had brought this much attention. More than five times that many gone was definitely going to draw an even bigger crowd.
The three men edged around the truck and sprinted towards the side of my neighbor’s house. It looked like they were planning on going over the fence and into my yard. What they weren’t planning on was me hiding on the porch, standing up as they walked beneath me and firing off three rapid bursts from my shotgun. Ragged bits of meat that had once belonged to humans splattered across the ground. The ash, once gray and light, now looked like fresh tar as blood soaked through it.
The remaining men behind the truck turned their attention towards me and peppered the house with bullets. Bits of wood and splinters of plastic from cheap furniture rained down around me. I held my shotgun tight and rolled for the far side of the porch. I blindly fired back.
Under the metallic clamor of bullet casings falling to the ground, I heard glass shatter. At first, I took it to be one of the front windows being shot out, but that had happened almost immediately. Smoke drifted through the street. No more shots echoed between the empty houses.
Carefully, I looked over the railing. Debris from the porch clung to my NBC suit like snowflakes, but I wasn’t bleeding. I slipped off the porch and moved towards the truck. Jared must have lobbed the last Molotov when he heard my shotgun fire. That kid could have played in the majors with that arm. Of course, he had a shit home life and the stands would now be filled with reanimated, leathery corpses instead of screaming fans, so that was kind of out of the question.
No one moved. The bodies smoked and a few still burned. I checked all the complete corpses, just to be sure. Screws and nails chewed through chunks of meat or become lodged in boney joints. It was unpleasant to look at, but I was glad the bombs had worked.
“It’s clear,” I shouted up to the roof of my house. “Danni. Jared. It’s clear.”
A muffled footstep thudded behind me. The gunshot cracked before I even had a chance to turn.