One Blink From Oblivion (13 page)

“Yeah that’s pretty much what we thought before we literally had our asses handed to us. I mean these guys here were trained soldiers. Now maybe you know your way around one of these here rifles but your two friends over there look about as green as a Saint Patty’s Day parade.”

“You’re right, but I have an idea that should tip the scales in our favor. Have you ever made a Molotov cocktail?”

“Now I enjoy a cold one from time to time just like the next feller, but I can’t see what a drink goin’ do for us now?”

“It’s not a drink; just pass me a bottle of that alcohol and a pair of those scrubs.”

With a look of confusion, Gilly complies. Over the next several minutes, he and Max shred the scrubs into thin strips until they have the same number of strips as bottles of alcohol.

Gilly, still a tad confused asks, “Are you gonna fill me in on what all this is for? I hate to seem slow but I ain’t seeing the big picture here.”

“You said that the bullets were ineffective, what about fire?”

“Well, yeah those things will burn up just like you and me. As a matter of fact I heard them boys over in Chatsworth were using flame throwers on ’em on account there were so many.”

This statement stops Max cold, and if his skin could have gone pale than he would be white as a sheet.

“Have you heard anything else about Chatsworth? Is everybody infected? Are there survivors? What are they doing with the survivors?”

“Hell, ain’t you seen no news boy? Chatsworth is ground zero for this shit. That virus came down out the air and started infecting anybody that had an open cut or even so much as a sore on their lip. Then those sons of bitches started biting and infecting everything else in sight. The shit spread like wild fire before anybody knew what hit ‘em. The folks that got infected early on was the lucky ones. At least they didn’t get all smashed up before they turned.” Gilly notices that the more he says the more ill Max appears to become.

“Say boy, you alright? You ain’t been bit has you?”

“No, my grandmother…” Max trails off, unable to put his greatest fear into words and thus make it a reality. “Let’s just get back to this.”

Max removes the lid from a bottle of alcohol and fully submerses a strip of the scrubs into it. He’s careful to soak every part of the rag. He then hangs the rag halfway out of the bottle and screws the lid back on as tight as he can.

“Do you have a lighter?” Max asks.

Gilly reaches into a pocket and produces a silver Zippo, “Only decent thing my Daddy ever gave me.”

Max continues, “When the time comes we light the rag and toss this at a biter, the bottle breaks on contact and the rag sets the alcohol on fire. Simple but affective.”

“Well if that ain’t slicker than snail jizz. I guess that beats this here grenade I been holdin’ onto.” Gilly produces a hand grenade and flicks the pull pin with his pointer finger.

“Be careful with that thing,” Max admonishes him, “this room is full of oxygen tanks. That thing goes off in here and it’s lights out for all of us.”

Gilly nods, “Good point,” and replaces the grenade in his pocket.

Max tips his head toward Vinny and Brooke, “I think I better give my friends over there a crash course on these weapons before that kid decides to drop in on us.” 

Max grabs an empty rifle and a full magazine and heads across the sporadically lit room. Gilly stays behind and busies himself with the completion of the remaining Molotovs. When Max is about halfway to reaching his friends, the door to the hall suddenly slams shut and in an instant, all light is extinguished. A scuttling sound can be heard as a small body moves across the room with alarming speed. Its direction is apparent.

“Gilly!” is all Max can manage before a cry of agony shatters the dark.

Max fumbles for the tactical light on the rifle in his hands and flicks it on with his thumb in time enough to see the small boy sinking his teeth into Gilly’s throat. Max has raised the rifle and pulled the trigger several times before he remembers the impotence of the weapon in his hand. His intention had been to load it in front of his friends so they could learn the steps.

The abbreviated monster sucks upon Gilly’s neck like an oversized leach, clinging to him with arms and legs. Gilly suddenly stops screaming and begins to grope at his hip in search of his sidearm. As soon as he finds it, he rips the nine-millimeter from its holster and places it flush against the belly of his attacker. Several muffled wet snaps can be heard in rapid succession, and are accompanied by an equal number of dull flashes. The shots send the boy careening backward and sliding in Brooke’s direction. In Max’s scramble to load his weapon, he temporarily loses sight of the child whose agonizing screech fills the room with a disorienting echo that makes him hard to track by sound alone.

Brooke stands unarmed and prepares herself for the worst, as the small brute’s slide toward her becomes a four-legged pursuit. She can see in her mind’s eye, the outline of the creature as it prepares to pounce.

Max’s gun is now loaded but he dare not shoot blindly for fear of hitting an oxygen tank and killing not only the biter but he and his friends as well. He swings it up and begins a frantic search with the rifles light. His search is interrupted by the sound of splintering wood, followed by the door to the hallway soaring through the room and taking out random medical equipment in its path.

Standing in the doorway and backlit by the increasingly frustrating strobe lights is a battered looking figure, covered in blood with a partially caved-in face freckled with what appears to be bone fragments. Max instantly recognized the clothes on the figure. It is the biter he had thrown off the overpass hours earlier. It seemed impossible that even an infected could survive such a fall, but yet and still, here he stands before them, and he presents a much more imposing figure than the small child does. They had only narrowly escaped their previous meeting the freeway-man and Max still has the bruises to prove it.

Now that light has returned to the room, Brooke can clearly see the boy’s yellow eyes zeroing in on her as it races for her throbbing neck. Just as she steels herself for the pounce, something bizarre happens.

The freeway-man covers the distance between the door and Brooke’s attacker in what seems like less than a millisecond. The boy leaps toward Brooke, and the man snatches him out of midair by the back of the neck. He holds the boy -with feet dangling- several feet off of the ground. The boy kicks and screeches and claws, still attempting to reach his prey.

A wretched bone-chilling voice overshadows the boy’s screech, “These three are spoken for,” the freeway-man says simply and calmly before slowly and deliberately pushing two fingers of his free hand into the boy’s eyes until he grips his head like a human bowling ball. He then proceeds to straighten the arm that holds his neck, while pulling back toward himself with the other. The result was a string of audible cracks as the child’s spinal column stretches and separates. The freeway-man continues to pull until finally tendons and skin give way to a torrent of blood and spinal fluid. He releases the boy’s head, which falls to the floor with a solid thud and spins a bit before landing semi-upright with the empty black soulless eye sockets staring back at Brooke.

The next sound heard is a solid booming from Vinny’s magnum, followed by two more in rapid succession. The flash produced by the muzzle-flare in the dimly lit room causes temporary flash blindness for Max, Vinny and Brooke. As soon as their collective visions have returned, it is apparent that the freeway-man has retreated as abruptly as he had entered, leaving only the broken body of the small boy as evidence that he had actually been there and they had in fact seen what they’d seen.

Outside, for nearly a quarter of a mile in every direction animalistic screams can be heard in response to the shots that have just betrayed Max, Vinny and Brooke’s location.

Brooke’s tremulous and desperately human voice barely carries above the chorus of the infected, “They’re coming.”

              Spurred on by the distant drone of rapidly approaching infected; Brooke, Max and Vinny scramble to secure the clinic as fast as they can. They debate only a moment, about weather or not it would be best to barricade themselves in with one biter that is presumably injured, or to hit the streets and take their chances with the unknown hordes approaching. They quickly decided it would be better to deal with a quantifiable evil than the local mob of who knows how many infected. They weren’t fooling themselves into thinking that sooner or later the infected wouldn’t breach the perimeter. No matter how well fortified it was they would find a way in. Somehow, the freeway-man had found his way in and possibly back out again. The biters seemed to have enhanced night-vision and would eventually find multiple points of entry.

              Max and Vinny barricade the front glass doors with as much heavy furniture as they can manage to move to the lobby. After doing her best to make Gilly comfortable in what are likely his final moments –the morphine seemed to be doing most of the work for her- Brooke handles the interior doors of the clinic. Aside from closing every door, she piles as much in front of them as she can find. Since all of the doors open inward, this proves to be problematic. There simply isn’t enough loose furniture to properly block every door that opens into the hallway. When she runs out of chairs and shelves, she resorts to dragging the bloodied bodies of the dead and piling them wherever she can. She feels like a hypocrite and ashamed of herself after giving Gilly a hard time over his perceived disregard for fallen comrades. Brooke is quickly learning that there is no limit to what a person can do when his or her life or the lives of those we love depend on it.

              After a quick search and discussion, no one had any inkling of how the freeway-man found entry into the clinic. So, blocking every door except the one at the end of the hall where Gilly lies seemed the only logical move. This large storage room that would serve as their fallback position had a high ceiling with no attic, windows, outer doors or ventilation. With only one way in or out, the doorway created a bottleneck where they could concentrate their fire should they find themselves in retreat.

              With all preparations made, Max gives a crash-course on the M4 assault rifle. He covers only the basics; the selector for the single shot or three shot burst, removing an empty clip and seating a full one, pulling and releasing the bolt to chamber the first round on a fresh clip, squeezing the trigger rather than pulling it, and using the heads up scope to aim with both eyes open. He purposely skips the operation of the trigger safety for fear that Brooke or Vinny may forget to switch it to ‘fire’ and be caught in a vulnerable position. The only thing left to do now is wait.

              Their first stand will be made from behind the receptionist’s counter. Brooke will watch the hall to be sure that the freeway-man, or any other infected, is not sneaking up on them from behind. Since Vinny has only one good arm, he will concentrate on the strategic tossing of the Molotovs. There isn’t much distance between the three of them and the lobby door so special care will have to be taken if they are to avoid burning themselves up along with their intended targets. Max will handle the majority of the shooting until and if they need to fall back, at which time he is quite sure they will all three be gunning for their lives.

              The screeches loom so close now that the sound has almost become deafening.

              “Is everybody ready?” Max receives nods all around, “Then lets do it.”

              The glass doors that comprise the lobby entrance suddenly implode and send shards spraying in Max and Vinny’s direction. They duck in time enough to avoid bodily injury but lose precious moments in the fight to defend the clinic. In the seconds it takes them to wait out the shower of shrapnel, several biters have already tossed the highest obstacle between them and their dinner to one side. The couch flies across the lobby and puts a hefty dent in the drywall. Max stands, picks a target and opens fire. Rather than concentrating all of his fire on one biter, he changes targets frequently in hopes of pushing them back as a whole. He aims primarily for their heads, when an open shot presents itself. He discovers quickly that the single fire selection on the M4 is inadequate at keeping the infected at bay. With a flick of his right thumb, he is firing in three shot burst and begins to feel more as though he’s making a difference. The 5.56 ammunition fired by the M4 has little knockdown power but can do massive damage to soft tissues once inside the body. Since the infected feel little to no pain only the most well placed shots have the sought after effect. Max stands erect to gain a clearer field of view. A combination of luck and skill on his part drops one infected attempting to climb over the barricade. Max’s shot hits the UPS man directly in the eye. The small bullet does its job and scrambles the man’s brain upon impact. He drops limply to the ground outside and Max thinks
‘what can brown do for me? Stay down, that’s what.’
The UPS man complies and does just that. The sight of one of their own dead on the pavement does little to assuage the onslaught of predators forcing their way in. A small Asian man wearing a shirt with ‘
EAT MORE BEEF!’
written across the front, uses his fallen companion as a step to gain more leverage.

              Max swings the rifle left to right, picking his targets based on the level of threat coupled with the amount of damage his bullets can do to the portion of their body that he can see. Primarily, he searches for gut, chest, neck and head. The high velocity ammunition rips through flesh sending splinters of bone, blood and bile through quarter size holes erupting from the backs of the infected. He hammers away with the M4 but the numbers of the infected continue to swell to the point that he can hold them off no longer.

              “Burn ‘em!” Max shouts to Vinny.

              Vinny stands with Gilly’s Zippo in his good hand and lights one of the Molotovs already lined up on the counter. He scans the lobby barricade for the biter that is presenting the most immediate threat and settles on a middle-aged Hispanic female dressed in a bloody Dodgers jersey. She has found a weakness in their barricade and is wriggling her way through a crack between a bench-chair and the wall. Vinny cocks his arm back and throws the bottle with as much force and accuracy as he can muster. He scores a direct hit and the jersey-girl is engulfed in flames. The howl she emits is so unnatural that Max and Vinny actually take a pause from their defense in order to process the sound. It can only be described as an odd synthesis between siren and roar. She burns in place unable to free herself from the flames or the tight position between the wall and bench.

              Three more, including the
‘EAT MORE BEEF’
man, begin to make their way over the top of the barricade and through the void left by the absent couch. Max continues to fire but it is painfully obvious that a single rifle of this type lacks the necessary punch to drop a biter in its place. The ejector on Max’s M4 locks in the open position, indicating that his second clip is now empty. With his right hand, Max presses the release and lets the clip fall to floor. With his left hand, he reaches for a fresh one from his pocket.

              “Torch it!” Max yells to Vinny who promptly lights another Molotov and tosses it directly at the barricade.

              The makeshift wall instantly burst into flame, igniting every infected that finds themselves in the splash-radius. Cushions containing cotton, polyester and vinyl take flame as readily as the alcohol sprayed upon them. The wood furniture burns with a quick intense heat and before long the ceiling panels have caught fire as well. Max and Vinny watch the wall and the infected trapped within it crackle and burn. The heat from the blaze intensifies rapidly. Even safely behind the counter the effect feels like sitting too close to a campfire and Max knows they will have to shift position soon or be burned along with the infected.

              Vinny points to the point of impact on the wall where the couch was thrown, “Check it out!” he yells.

              Where the couch had weakened the drywall, several hands can now be seen punching through.

              “They found a way around the fire,” replies Max, “Concentrate your aim there.”

Max and Vinny both open fire and the rapid rat-tat-tat explosions of the rifles are deafening in the small space. Drywall and fragments of wood spray into the air as the rifles shred the area around the intruding fists, but ragged and bloodied fist and hands just keep pounding and ripping away at the wall.

Max lets up on the trigger, “Cease fire, we’re just helping them break through faster. We need to conserve ammo. Don’t fire unless you can hit something vital.”

Vinny complies and turns to check on Brooke whose eyes are wide with fear and adrenaline. “We’re going to be ok!” He yells to her over the biter’s screams and the roar of the fire.

Brooke doesn’t respond. She returns her attention to the hallway that they will soon have to travel. The upside is that the fire is now providing adequate light and the corridor can be traversed with greater confidence. The downside is that before long that same fire will engulf the hallway and everything around or within it.

                “We better move while we still can!” Brooke shouts over the sirens of the burning and the screams of the hungry.

              Max agrees, “Lets go, but we stay together and take it slow.”

              Max moves to the lead position in the hallway, followed by Brooke with Vinny bringing up the rear. As per Max’s plan of retreat, he would focus on the hall ahead while Brooke covers the doorways to their left and right. Vinny will cover their flank and prevent them from being overrun... At least, that was the plan.

              The maddening sound of the infected breaking through the hole in the lobby wall grows ever louder and makes the use of directional hearing impossible. They are submerged in so much noise that vision is their only remaining ally.

              Max and Brooke’s eyes dart tirelessly about, from hall to ceiling, ceiling to door, and back to hall. Everyone expects the freeway-man to make another impromptu appearance at any moment. They were caught off guard once already and probably would not be so fortunate to survive a third go round.

              Vinny is walking backward and expecting a deluge of biters at any moment. He keeps his center of gravity low. If the biters charge him he’ll hit them head-on and drive his legs as long as possible to give Brooke and Max a chance to escape. To his surprise he finds himself smiling slightly at the prospect of a full on, drag out, hand-to-hand battle with the infected. Truth be told, he was tired of running, and after having his ass handed to him by little old Lisa he was ready for some redemption.

              Back in the front, Max is panning his rifle left to right and allowing the barrel to follow his gaze. ‘Never look anywhere you’re not prepared to shoot,’ his father used to tell him. Who would have thought that so much of his father’s criminal teachings would some day come in handy, and after Max had made so much effort to stay clean? Irony at its finest.

              While looking out for the freeway-man Max also keeps one eye on the door at the end of the hall. Though it seemed that Gilly had lost far too much blood to survive even as an infected, Max is taking no chances. If Gilly emerges looking even the slightest bit too spry from that door, Max intends to unload everything he has into him.

              They’re now halfway down the hall and Max is beginning to believe that they can make it.

              “We’re almost…” Max’s words are cut short by a door being ripped from its hinges just to his left.

              The firelight doesn’t extend into the room and the only thing Max can make out are some broken tiles dangling from the ceiling. Before he can swing his flashlight-equipped rifle into position, He is being driven back into the wall behind him. The hit is harder than anything he ever experienced on the football field, but Max manages to keep the gun between him and his attacker. The rifle runs up and down the length of their bodies and its girth is the only thing preventing the biter’s teeth from sinking into the soft flesh of Max’s throat. The rifle’s tactical light shines on the face of the infected and to Max’s surprise it is not the mangled face of the freeway-man. His attacker is a young man not much older than Max, and judging by the stethoscope still griping his neck he must have been a doctor here at the clinic.

              Max’s collision with the wall deals a hefty blow to his back and head, which is slow to register as pain due to the copious amounts of adrenaline coursing through his system. That same adrenaline also sharpens his thought processes and he responds to his attacker with a brutality he had hoped he was no longer capable of.

              Max takes advantage of the fortuitous positioning of his rifle and jams the barrel up into the biter’s chin. He pulls the trigger and instantly a red-hot hole blooms in the doctor’s face spraying a jet of blood and jawbone fragments out in tight trajectory. The fountain of blood covers the left side of Max’s shirt. Max immediately realizes that his shot has not scrambled the biter’s brain as he had hoped, but it has gained him a few feet of space to work with. Before the doctor can regain his composure and renew his pursuit Max steps back and rocks him with a high roundhouse kick to what’s left of his head. He kicks with so much force that he drives the doctor’s head inside the wall and collapses his already shattered face a bit more. Momentarily stuck and blinded, the doctor lashes out wildly at the empty space around him. Without a clear shot at the Doctor’s head Max aims his rifle pointblank at the biter’s exposed neck and unloads the rest of the thirty round magazine. By the time the rifle is empty the doctor’s body is slumped and twitching on the floor. His head however, remains in the divot in the wall with the stethoscope swinging back and forth like a pendulum. The only connection remaining between head and body is a bloody streak down the wall between those two disconnected parts.