One of the horsemen sobbed and then said, “We know who they are. You left your mark on my brother. You’re still holding his knife, you faithless dogs.”
Shotgun man said, “To hell with your brother. Get on your side or we’ll take your life just like the stupid, dead monsters you have tied to your-”
The shot exploded behind us and a burst of fluid misted out from shotgun man’s face as he staggered sideways to the ground. Pistol man ran across in front of us firing through our faces. One of the horses fell behind us. Both horsemen opened fire.
Dirt exploded up at my feet. I dropped to the ground anyway.
Two shots struck pistol man in the chest and sprayed out his back. He continued to fire as he fell. Shotgun wavered up to his knees and blasted out a round. He was struck in the chest by one more shot from behind us. As he fell slowly backward, the shotgun boomed again and one of the horses brayed in pain as it collapsed.
Everything was silent except for my ringing ears. I sat up and looked behind me. Both horses and riders were on the ground and motionless too.
Doc stood up out of the grass looking around cursing over and over.
He huffed. “Are we still alive?”
Chef said, “Let’s go. They’ll be coming from both sides.”
Doc said, “Grab their weapons and anything else they have. We’ll need all we can get.”
I started searching the raiders. I grabbed the pistol and shotgun. There was nothing else, but clothing. Doc got a pistol off one of the horsemen. He found nothing in the robes, but pulled a canteen and a pack of food out of the saddle.
Chef searched around, but couldn’t find the other horseman’s gun. He started going through the saddle bags. The horseman lunged forward and bit down on Chef’s hand. Chef tried to pull back away from the bite, but the man kept his teeth clamped tight over Chef’s hand.
Chapter 12: The Hour It Boiled Over
People were approaching from the direction of the lights in the distance across the field where the Riding Dead had caught us. More were coming through at an angle along the line of posts where the horsemen had come to take us back for killing and carving their people.
Chef was clawing at the eyes of the man pinned under the dead horse that had his teeth locked on the meaty piece of Chef’s hand between the thumb and forefinger. Blood was running over the downed horseman’s pale lips and was dripping off his chin.
I just stood and stared.
Doc stepped up beside Chef and jammed the knife through the horseman’s ear. Every muscle in his head clinched and Chef screamed. The man collapsed pulling Chef down with him.
Doc straddled the horse’s body and tried to wretch the knife back and forth in the brain through the ear canal, but the jaws remained locked.
Chef screamed, “He was alive, Doc. Use the knife to pry open his teeth.”
Doc braced his foot and extracted the blade from the head. Chef held his own palm in agony. Doc slowly slid the blade between the back teeth.
The pursuers from both camps were getting closer. We were about to be the cause of the largest war since the Mad Hatter lost his head.
Chef said, “Careful, Doc, that knife has been in zombies.”
“You’re already bit,” Doc said.
“He was alive,” Chef shouted. “Don’t slice me and I’ll live.”
Doc pursed his lips as he twisted the knife slowly. The teeth cracked and broke. The jaw cracked inside the head as the pieces separated. Chef jerked his bloody hand free and clutched it to his chest.
Doc checked the clip to the gun he had taken. It was empty. There was one in the chamber.
“What are you planning, Trasker?” Chef asked.
“You’ve been bitten,” Doc said.
“Once you start killing,” Chef said, “you just can’t stop again.”
The people emerged from the direction of the light. Their decayed faces looked ghostly from the backlight. The ones approaching along the fence border merged with them as they advanced on the earlier sound of the gunfire. I checked the two guns I had picked up from the raiders. They were both empty. I dropped them.
Chef stepped up to Doc. Doc raised the gun and backed up from him. I pulled the .45 out of my pocket.
“You’re one of a kind, Doc,” Chef said. “You knew those people back at the diner, didn’t you? You weren’t the least bit surprised at what we found there. How many other bodies of yours have we passed? How many did you carve your initials into? How many did you leave your mark on, Trasker?”
The dead were crossing the open grass toward us in a solid wall. We needed to go.
“As many as it took, David Sharp,” Doc said.
“You’re not shooting me because you think I’m infected,” Chef said. “You’re just shooting me, you animal.”
“Believe what you like, Chef,” Doc said. “We’re just at another funeral.”
I raised the .45 and thumbed back the hammer as I advanced on Doc. He saw me and grabbed at my gun. The shot went off inches to the side of his head as he twisted the .45 out of my hand. The shot went wide and grazed off the ear of one of the dead approaching us. One of the bodies in the second row bucked a little as the bullet plugged him, but he kept walking.
Doc turned his gun on me. Chef tackled him from the side and tried to take it. He ended up on top of Doc on the ground.
Doc looked over at the advancing monsters and said, “Let me up. They’re coming.”
“We’re just at another funeral,” Chef grunted. “We’re all dying sometime.”
Chef was only using one good hand to fight for the gun as he held his bitten hand to his chest. Doc guided the barrel with both his hands. He slid his finger back on the trigger and fired under Chef’s chin and through the top of his head. The life melted out of him and he folded back into the bloody grass. I watched expecting my eyes to see something different. Doc scrambled out from under Chef’s legs as the dead leaned over him.
I turned and ran without looking.
The dead kept herding me forward. They emerged from the trees on each side and forced me up a lane between them. I curved around the rise of the ridge as the land guided the zombies and the zombies guided me.
I came out near a road as I gasped for breath. I pumped up the hill as I saw a jeep with three men looking down with binoculars. I saw their jackets and I knew who they were, but I was out of options.
I fell to my knees in front of them.
I was pulled into the back of the Jeep as I watched the mass of walkers follow me up the hill in another super pack. They were pouring out from between every tree. They filled the grass and the road behind us as we barreled away in the open vehicle.
A hood was pulled over my head. For the first time, I was thankful for it.
We drove for a while. The men began laughing.
One of them said, “Show him.”
The hood was pulled off my head. I could still see the zombies following us in mass. The light behind me in front of the jeep was bright now. I turned and looked. A large sign read, The New Portown: Riding Dead Territory. You should have known better.
A body hung by its hands from a rope above the town sign. The chest was cut open and the heart was missing. There was a sign around its neck that read, The last MoHo.
As we passed under it, I saw the upside down “MH” brand on the upraised shoulder and I saw Shaw’s face with duct tape across his mouth.
There were rivulets of blood stained down his cheeks from his torn eyelids and empty sockets like dark tears.
They cut out his eyes while he was still alive … before they cut out his heart, I thought.
I heard a strangled noise escape my throat. It was a choking or gagging noise. I could taste the rawness in the back of my dry throat. My eyes burned with my tears as badly as they had when the Riding Dead tore the duct tape off my face.
As we drove under his body and through the fences, I remember wondering, How much of that tape could be left in the world? Surely, we are approaching the end of the roll.
The hood was pulled back over my head and just like Shaw, I couldn’t see any longer.
He had come back for us, but we had left him to this.
I failed to save anyone, I thought.
The Jeep finally stopped and I was led out and up some stairs. I was thrown into a room. I heard people breathing and whispering. Outside gunfire started. It was a few shots at first and then a massive barrage.
Someone outside the room yelled, “We are being mobbed. There are stinks everywhere. Leave two and send the rest to the fences. Now!”
There was more muttering in the room. The hood was ripped off my head. I was looking up at Mason with his grey strings of hair hanging in his bruised and bloody face.
He said, “You’re the one they call Mutt. The mute one that doesn’t talk, right? They killed the Hatter veteran and strung him up at the gate. Where are the others? Holland? Trasker?”
I shook my head. It was answer enough for both of them.
There was an explosion in the distance. The floor vibrated. It was followed by another. There was a third and then increased gunfire and yelling.
Mason looked out at the guards and then back around the room. There were his men, other men, women, and three children.
He pointed to one women with dark hair tied in a braid.
Mason asked her, “What’s your name?”
She answered, “Linda.”
He asked, “Do they use explosives to fight zombies?”
“No,” she answered.
Outside someone below the balcony yelled up, “Rezzers are attacking. We need everyone. Take out the prisoners and slaves and come on!”
I remember not being sure from that order if they meant that they were taking us somewhere else or if they were going to kill us.
Mason said, “Get ready.”
The guards walked into the room. One was grabbed from outside and pulled back out of sight. The first guard turned around as his friend fell back in bleeding from his head. Mason’s men jumped the second guard. They snapped his neck before he could get a shot off from his weapon. They came up with both rifles.
Doc walked in with the bloody knife and his bloody, metal pole. He was bleeding from a cut over his eye.
“Collin Trasker,” Mason said, “I owe you an apology, but it will have to wait until we get the hell out of here. Boys, go find a clear path and then come back for us.”
Mason’s men ran out the door leaving the rest of us in the room. There were more explosions and gunfire outside. It was getting closer.
“How bad is it out there?” Mason asked.
Doc jammed the knife under Mason’s chin and into his skull. He left it embedded there as Mason collapsed to the floor. Everyone screamed.
Doc said, “Bad. Real bad.”
One of Mason’s men came running back into the room. He stared at the body in the floor in shock. He charged Doc and grabbed him from behind, but got the back of Doc’s head thrown into his nose. The man grabbed the gun out of Doc’s belt as he went.
He struggled to turn it around in his hands as Doc swung the bar knocking it loose. The man charged again, but got his jaw broken by Doc’s metal bar and then his head fractured as he was knocked to the floor.
I crawled forward slowly as Doc beat the man to death.
Doc looked around at the men and women in the floor. He pursed his lips and started to sing.
“There is a fountain filled with blood…” he sang as he started swinging his bar around the room.
Women wailed as Doc hit them along the floor on both sides of the room. Linda pulled the three children together and covered them with her body.
“It ‘tis drawn from Immanuel’s veins. And sinners plunged beneath that flood loose all them guilty stains,” he grunted as he crushed bone and split flesh with practiced violence.
Linda was whispering to the children, “Lori, Tabitha, Caleb, Shh, you are not here. We are someplace safe. We are someplace far away and this will all be over soon.”
I closed my hand on the .45 that Mason’s man had tried to take from Doc and raised it up in the air.
My mother had whispered that if I didn’t say anything, everything would be okay. She told me to save my sister. I didn’t even remember their names or faces.
Doc advanced on Linda’s hunched body with the bar above his head.
He sang again, “All there guilty stains!”
I couldn’t pull the trigger.
I heard a voice yell, “No, Collin!”
Doc froze and looked at me holding the gun on him. He actually smiled.
He said, “Great, Mutt, you pick now to start talking.”
I didn’t realize I had spoken until he said so. He took one hand off the bar above his head and held out the arm. There was a deep, bloody bite mark around his forearm. I thumbed back the hammer with a click.
“Just a scratch, maybe,” he said, “We are all dead, Mutt. All of us. I didn’t do so well without you watching my back, buddy. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
He put the hand back on the bar and brought it down at Linda’s head. I fired into the center of his chest. He missed her and staggered backward into the doorway dragging the metal bar along the floor. He pursed his lips at me, but when he opened his mouth to speak, he spit out blood. He walked slowly backward dragging the bar and clutching his bleeding chest. He backed into the rail, but kept going. The wood railing snapped loose and he was dumped over the side.
I held my hands over the knot in my stomach and stared and the floor heaving for air.
Linda looked around the room full of broken bodies and then over to me still holding the gun against my own gut. There was another explosion and more gunfire outside.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
There was a scream outside.
I stood up and held out my hand to help her up. She handed me Caleb instead as she hoisted up the two girls.
She said, “Lead the way, Mutt.”
I got us out the door, down the stairs, and around the corner. Near the building in the street was a Jeep. There was more gunfire in the distance, but I didn’t see the men of any of the groups involved in the fighting. The Jeep was open all around the top and sides. That scared me.
I stood unable to decide what to do next. Linda started to say something and then stopped.