I turned my attention back to the approaching horde and clicked the safety to the fire position. I focused on taking deep breaths, forcing myself to relax as adrenaline was dumped into my system, further testing whether there is a limit to how much a body can produce in a day.
As the horde passed through the hundred yard line my mind had imagined across the field, I took a knee to create a steadier shooting platform. At seventy yards, I began taking the slack out of the trigger as I struggled to keep the bobbing head of the lead infected in my sight picture.
A gun boomed to my right and the bobbing head in my sights exploded, spraying the face behind with goop. I quickly moved my aim to the left and squeezed the trigger. The bullet flew true, snapping a head backwards. The twenty something year old girl fell to the ground. I moved to the next target. My focus was on the front sight as I squeezed the trigger again. The head wagged to the side as the gun went off and the bullet missed. The errant bullet hit the head of another infected behind the intended target.
Bodies were dropping throughout the group. By the time they reached my imagined fifty yard mark, ten to fifteen had fallen before our hail of bullets. As they got closer, more of my bullets struck their intended marks. I was still missing nearly half of my shots. At thirty yards I was hitting three quarters. By fifteen yards all but ten had been eradicated as they crossed the grassy area.
My bolt locked back after expending the last round in the magazine. There was no time to reload. I released my grip on the rifle and pulled my pistol from the holster. The rifle hung suspended at my chest. Shooting moving targets with the pistol was much less effective than the rifle had been. Three infected reached the trailer in front of me. I shot the first two before my pistol ran out of bullets. The last one to reach the truck leaped onto the lip of the flat bed. He landed in a crouch. I was standing on the stack of pipes, which was three feet higher than him. I reached out with my foot and kicked him in the face as hard as I could. He toppled from the back of the truck and landed sprawled out on the ground. In less than a second he was back on his feet. I had already dropped my pistol and was reaching for a rifle magazine when the driver of the earth mover fired his .45. The finishing bullet drove the last infected back to the ground where he remained, unmoving.
Before I had time to release the breath I was holding, Wim yelled, “Look out behind you!”
I turned and was devastated to see another forty charging. The horde was nearly at base of the trailer.
Chapter
35
I was placing the new magazine in the rifle when I turned around. As the magazine clicked into place, I simultaneously hit the bolt release. Before I could bring the rifle up, an infected had scaled the back side of the trailer. Jeb turned around as the creature lunged at him. He instinctively sidestepped, trying to evade the fiend. It was enough that its teeth missed his neck as they
clacked
shut on air. It wasn’t enough to dodge its grasping arms. The two tumbled over the back side of the trailer, grasping at each other in midair as gravity took effect and dragged them toward the awaiting ground.
The fall lasted less than half a second. In that brief time, Jeb was able to wrap both hands around the beast’s emaciated neck. He refused to release his steely grasp despite the battering he received from the lanky, flailing arms.
And then gravity completed its task. The creature landed on its back as Jeb rode it to the ground. The body hit, and the head followed. The grass was sprinkled every morning. The moist dirt beneath the grass cushioned the landing. The beast’s head bounced after striking the damp earth. It wasn’t enough to knock the monster unconscious. The impact was enough, however, to knock the wind out of Jeb; I saw it on his face. He retained his grip around the scrawny neck, which was the only thing that kept the searching teeth from sinking into his unprotected flesh. The beating he was taking from the relentless arms and legs was moments from breaking his hold on the monster.
Frank bounded off the trailer and landed at Jeb’s side. I turned back to the encroaching horde. Jeb was in Frank’s hands now. Matt, the tractor driver, and I were left alone to defend the trailer, which was about to be overrun.
I didn’t take time to align my sights on anything. The horde of stinking flesh was so close I didn’t have to aim. I pulled the trigger over and over. Nearly every shot painted the grass behind with a conglomeration of bone, blood and brains. The mass of bodies parted as those on the edges washed around the ends of the trailer like water flowing around a boulder in a burbling stream. The center of the mob climbed the trailer in a frontal attack. The calm air was fractured with unrelenting gunfire from the trailer as well as the sound of Frank’s rifle hammering away behind. At least Frank was still alive. I didn’t have time to look back and see if Jeb had survived.
The bodies were so close, I was placing the barrel of my rifle firmly to flesh before I pulled the trigger on most shots. I couldn’t miss. I still couldn’t kill them fast enough. Our only salvation was the elevated advantage we held. The infected’s forward momentum slowed when they were forced to ascend the trailer. I knew that advantage wasn’t going to help Frank or Jeb. The bodies going around the trailer weren’t slowed like the ones that had to climb it. And Frank and Jeb were being attacked from both the right and the left. All I could do was utter a silent prayer for them as I fought my own hopeless battle.
Matt yelled, “Empty!” There was no way he was going to be able to reload before he was pushed off the trailer. I kicked a head and redirected my aim to cover Matt ten feet to my left. Matt paused his reload long enough to kick an infected at his feet, knocking it off the trailer. I shot another that was poised to pounce at Matt’s side. The bullet struck the infected in the shoulder. The destroyed shoulder joint flopped harmlessly as the force of the bullet spun it around. The body slumped off the trailer and sprawled on the ground, only to get back up and resume its assault.
My next shot passed perfectly through the ear of another infected. The only sign of the bullet hitting its target was a red dot the size of a dime. As the body fell, it twisted ninety degrees, revealing the other side of the head and further evidence of the collision between lead and flesh. The hollow point bullet had expanded from the diameter of a quarter of an inch to over half of an inch. The high velocity impact created a shockwave through the gelatinous brain. Grey matter was liquefied as the wave propagated through the proteinatious tissue. The shockwave battered against the opposite side of skull. There was nowhere for the energy to go and it pulverized the bone, exploding outward. The bullet created a vacuum as it traveled and sucked the remaining contents of the skull out the gaping hole on the far side, leaving the half intact cranium empty. The lifeless corpse fell off the trailer, knocking a grappling body with it.
Matt completed reloading his rifle and engaged the closest body, putting the end of the barrel against its skull. He pulled the trigger, shattering the head. I turned my gun toward the bodies in front of me. I was too slow. A vice like pressure clamped onto my leg just above my left ankle. Teeth ripped through my pants, tore through skin and threatened to crush the bone beneath.
I mashed the muzzle against the top of its skull and jerked the trigger in a panic, hoping the bullet didn’t ricochet off the back of the skull and hit my leg. Any semblance of finesse and skill was gone. The trigger pull violated every marksmanship lesson I had ever received. The range was point blank. Marksmanship didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was releasing the pulverizing jaws from my leg. There was no question of whether or not the bullet would find its mark; it was a given and it did. The body momentarily stiffened and then relaxed and slid off the trailer. It would have landed on the ground, but was stopped short by the pile of carcasses below me that was at least three deep.
I shot two more times at separate infected and then there were no more in front of me. I turned and saw the scattered bodies all around. Matt shot twice and his target fell. Frank and Jeb were on the ground standing back to back. Carcasses of dead infected were piled at their feet. Sporadic shots sounded off randomly like the last kernels of popcorn out of the popper as the wounded were finished off. The entire event had lasted no more than forty seconds. The attack from the front was twenty-five to thirty seconds, including the charge across no man’s land. The initial attack was followed by a ten to fifteen second attack from the back.
My body was spent and I wasn’t the only one. The bubble lens of Frank’s mask was fogged up from the brief, but all consuming, exertion required during the attack. Sweat streamed down Jeb’s forehead and cheeks. His gas mask had been knocked off in the initial struggle. His eyes searched for it in vain. It was somewhere beneath the bodies at his feet. The damage had likely already been done. Digging through infected corpses would only increase his exposure. He followed Frank back onto the trailer, hoping to escape the life sucking germs oozing from the bodies on the ground as blood continued to pool.
Matt fired twice more, putting finishing rounds in crawling infected and then it was quiet. A gust of wind picked up for a few moments and then dissipated, leaving dust hanging in the air. I looked to my left. The tractor driver was on the ground. His shirt was soaked through with blood around the collar. His nickel plated pistol was on the ground at his side. He had run out of bullets and the action was locked open. An infected lay across him with the handle of a survival knife protruding from just behind its ear. An unknown length of blade was buried in the skull.
I descended to the ground and rolled the lifeless body off the driver whose name I had not learned. A four inch piece of skin was missing from his neck. Beneath the skin, a similar sized piece of muscle had been extracted, leaving behind ragged edges of muscle and tissue. His life had already drained away with the gallon of blood that had gushed from his severed carotid artery. Once teeth had ripped the artery in two, there was nothing anyone could have done for him.
He had fought to the death. That was all a man could do. He didn’t give up, even when his fate was sealed. He managed to kill his assailant after it had administered a fatal wound. Men of his tenacity and determination are uncommon.
We could have used him.
Chapter
36
We stood on the trailer and gravely surveyed the scene. Bodies were strewn across the grass on both sides. Close to the trailer, the grass was solid red. Blood had completely erased any traces of the chlorophyll induced green from every blade. Further from the trailer, the color became more mottled. Green showed through seas of crimson. Further yet, islands of red floated in an ocean of green. Finally, all vestiges of the bloody battle disappeared in the tranquil field of green.
At the center of each crimson pool lay the broken body of an infected. Each had a gaping hole in his or her head. Some had other holes as well. Stray bullets had plowed deeply into flesh, many passing through completely. Some were induced by bullets already driven through the skull of an infected which then struck an individual unlucky enough to be in a straight line between the muzzle of a rifle and the head of a target. Others were from bullets that missed their intended target. Bodies had been in close enough proximity that original misses had turned into hits.
Nearly eighty humanesque forms littered the ground, loudly proclaiming a new and terrifying message. For the second time today, the infected had worked together to implement an effective ambush, an ambush that had nearly overcome our defense, not by brute force, but by deception.
Half of the attacking force had remained out of sight while the other half hurled themselves against our formidable stronghold. Not until our attention was completely focused away from the unseen threat did the onslaught from the second prong of the attack commence.
If not for Wim’s timely warning, the second wave would have swept over us, catching us fully unaware. We would have been overcome, completely oblivious to the fact that we were even in danger. This was not the working of a mindless mob relying on instinct. This two fronted attack showed calculation and strategy. When it became evident that the attack was unsuccessful, the remaining infected had melted away as if they had dissolved into the air itself. There were no more on-looking ghouls, no menacing howls. Other than the corpses of the deceased around us, it was as if they had never even been here.
I had watched documentaries about wolves. At times, they worked in concert to bring down large animals. I had even seen a pack split into two groups to attack in coordination from different directions. This infected attack, however, was too perfect. It was too well organized. It didn’t seem possible for it to have been initiated by instinct alone.
This single attack involved over five percent of Lost Hills’ population. Between the rest of the group which had escaped, the ones laying dead around us, and the others we had killed over the last day, we had encountered at least ten percent of the town’s population as infected. The problem with these numbers was that nobody was moving around. Everyone was locked securely away inside their homes. The infection shouldn’t have spread so rampantly.
We had no idea how big the exposure actually was. Containment in our town was a lost cause. There was no longer an expectation of protecting people from the disease. If the infection was rampaging through our spread out population at this pace, there was no hope for those living in metropolitan apartments, one stacked on top of another.
It would tear through inner city slums without abandon. Multi-story apartments would be fertile breeding grounds for the infection. Infected hordes would spill into business districts where people were working in congested city centers. Rapid routes of escape would be nonexistent. People trying to get out of the city would be imprisoned by gridlock on every street. Subways would be overwhelmed. Sick people in the mobs would infect everyone else. Those who did escape would likely be exposed in the process and take the infection back to their quiet suburbs, where it would rapidly propagate. There was no stopping the spread; it would sweep across the entire country unhindered.
The government should have nuked Lost Hills at the outset.
It remained unseen whether the infection would be contained to North America. It was doubtful. It would certainly travel through Central America and enter South America. Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa may be spared because of the oceans that separated them from the Americas. Most likely, however, wealthy individuals would try to escape North America in private jets. It would only take one infected plane to pass unhindered through blockades in the confusion and the infection would hit Europe. If that occurred, Asia and Africa would quickly fall prey as well. The scene would repeat and Australia would fall, too.
It was inevitably going to become a worldwide pandemic.
I had no way of deciphering whether this was the hand of God passing judgment on mankind or something else altogether. It really didn’t matter. I had already devoted myself to seeing my family through this cataclysm. God spared Noah and his family in a previous judgment; perhaps he would see fit to spare my family as well.