“And
also make sure of your target before you pull the trigger,” Tick-Tock added as he entered the room with Denise behind him. “Fire control isn’t just for Smokey the Bear.”
The ten remaining people from The Battleship Texas nodded at this
. To Steve, they all looked scared, but behind this readily apparent fear was a posture of determination. This pleased him. They had a long way to go, with numerous unknowns in front of them, and he needed everyone to pull their weight.
Heather said loudly, “Everyone get into position.”
As they moved around to find the places in the hall that they had been assigned earlier by Tick-Tock, she said softly to Steve, “I’m still worried that we don’t have anyone spotting to make sure the area is clear before we pop those panels off.”
Steve shook his head and replied, “We’ve been over it a dozen times and keep coming to the same conclusion. If we leave a spotter on the roof, or even on the second floor, we’d have to wait for them to catch up and it will leave everyone too exposed.
We saw before how quick those things recovered from the blast from the dynamite, so we know we’ll have to move fast. On top of that, the dead from the sides and the front of the mansion are going to come quick. If we wait for a spotter before popping the panels, we all might not get through. Anyone that’s even a minute behind us will probably get cut off if we wait outside for them. We only have one shot at this, so it’s win or lose.”
With a sigh, Heather said, “I know, but it’s still a big risk.”
With a laugh, Steve said, “And so is everything else we’ve done so far.” Seeing her uneasy look, he gave her a hug and said, “I’m not going to say that everything is going to be okay, but it will be what it’s going to be.”
Hugging him back, Heather said softly, “That’s
fucking reassuring.”
Steve laughed.
***
With a half
-bow, Brain pulled the detonator from his pack and handed it to Connie as he said, “Would you do the honors, my lady?”
With a strained smile, she took the radio as Tick-Tock called out to his trainees, “I want everyone to
squat down and put their palms against their ears and open their mouths, just like we practiced. I don’t know how bad it will be, but I don’t want anyone going deaf from the concussion.”
Hands rose
to do as they were told as Connie looked unsure at the detonator in her hands. She didn’t know when to press the transmit button, so she looked questioningly at Brain.
“I’m going to say
, ‘Fire in the hole’ three times, and then you press the button,” he told her. Looking to Steve, who nodded, he said loudly, “Fire in the hole, fire in the hole, fire in the hole.”
***
The dead thing looked at the lump lying beneath the shuffling feet of its brethren before dropping to its knees and picking it up. The object had seemed to fall from the sky just seconds ago to bounce off the head of what had once been a shopkeeper to land in front of it.
When it had been alive, its name had been Ethan, but it had no recollection of this or how it had died or where it had come from. It would be impossible to explain to the raggedy
, dead thing that it once had a mother named Lena and a sister named Megan, or that it had been infected and died when it had gone on a foraging trip with his sister and that she couldn’t bring herself to put a bullet into its brain. It didn’t know that after it had died and come back that it had wandered westward for days before coming across a group of things just like it.
Instinct told it to join them.
Since then, they had come across three separate bands of travelers that they had fallen upon and eaten, but now humans had become elusive. It had dug for grubs and termites to try and feed its insatiable appetite, but even those had become rare. The lure of food had brought it and its herd across this area four times before they ended up outside the mansion.
The thing that had been Ethan might not have known any of this, but when it saw the thing lying on the trampled grass at the back of the mansion,
the faint memory of a word passed briefly through its shattered mind.
‘Ball’.
Holding the white blob of plastic explosives against its chest, it made its way through the tightly packed mass of dead. Being only eleven years old helped, as it occasionally dropped down to weave its way between the legs of the mob and finally into the open.
After reaching the outer edge of the mass of dead pressed against the building that held
the food, it suddenly stopped. Looking at the open area leading to the fence, it turned its head and looked back at the mansion. It had completely forgotten about the object in its hands or that it had wanted to get away from the rest of its kin so it could play. Reasoning was gone forever from its brain, so instead of asking itself what it was doing out here, when only moments before it had been less than twenty feet away from the food that was very reason for its existence, it turned and started moving back the way it had come.
The blast came before it took its first step, disintegrating what had been Ethan and
shredding all those close by with shrapnel as it knocked them down.
***
The explosions came so close that they sounded like one. Dust dropped from the ceiling from the concussion, and the walls shook so hard that a picture of Jesus holding a lamb in his arms fell with a resounding crash. The noise from the blast was barely a memory when the two men with crowbars jumped up and ran into the room to frantically pry at the storm panels covering the window.
Steve, Heather and Tick-Tock followed
, stopping to stand a few feet behind them with their rifles at the ready. The lights flickered for a moment and then died as the generator gave out, leaving them with nothing but a few rays of dust-filled sunlight shining in through the cracks around the panels. One of these widened as the panel on the right pushed outward, but then it stopped after only a few inches to be pushed back.
The man that had been working
on it stepped back and raised his foot to kick it, even as Steve yelled at him to stop. He had seen that the storm panel had been pushed back by something on the outside, and that could only mean one thing.
In his quest to
be free of the dust and confinement of the small room, the man didn’t listen and lunged out with his foot. The panel flew off, but instead of the opening being filled with sunlight streaming in, it was filled with the faces and clawing hands of the dead as they grabbed on to the extended leg and dragged the screaming man into their midst. Vicious teeth and nails dug into him from all sides as he was literally torn apart before his body disappeared into the throng of dead outside the window.
Gunfire and shouts erupted as
the group reacted. The dead that showed themselves in the opening were quickly shot down, only to be replaced by more. These, too, were quickly dispatched by the accurate, almost point blank fire from Heather, Tick-Tock and Steve, but a never-ending stream of dirt-covered, snarling faces and clawing hands replaced them. The noise was tremendous, and soon the stink of burnt gunpowder filled the air to mix with the dust and create a haze in the small bedroom.
Knowing that it was taking too long,
Steve yelled, “Cover me,” as he approach the window from an angle for a better look, moving sideways to stay out of the line of fire. They had been killing the dead at a steady pace for almost half a minute, with what seemed like little effect on the continuing stream of Zs trying to get in, and he needed to see exactly what they were facing. It was hard for him to imagine that there were this many of the dead left after the tremendous blast from the explosives, and he had to see how many they were facing. He knew they had to get rid of them fast since they only had a short time before the ones from the front and sides of the house came around back and cut them off completely. His first thought was to use another of Brain’s bombs.
Finding it hard to see with all the bodies climbing over each other
to get at them, he yelled, “Pour it on,” to Heather and Tick-Tock to see if they could shoot an opening through the Zs. The dead fell away momentarily from the onslaught of lead, but he still had to jump up to get a better look over the crowding heads of the dead.
On his
second leap into the air, he finally had a clear view of the back of the mansion, and what he saw filled him with dread.
The dead were massed twenty or thirty deep
around the window, with more coming to join them by the second. He could see the carnage inflicted by the explosives, but it all appeared to be further away from the building. The first bomb should have taken out most, if not all, of the dead they were now having to shoot, but it looked like it hadn’t gone off.
Bouncing up again for one last look, he rejoined his friends and said loud enough to be heard over the gunfire, “The first bomb didn’t go off. There’s too many of them back there
, and we’re out of time. It looks like there’s already a shitload of them coming around from the front of the house, too.”
Heather shot into the
forehead of what had once been a housewife from Dallas, and then pointed her CAR-15 at the motionless bodies of the dead that were starting to clog the opening as she said, “Looks like we’re plugging the hole, though.”
Steve considered this for a few seconds
. Even with the volume of outgoing rifle fire, a few of the dead had managed to get close enough to start climbing in. As they were shot down, their bodies dropped to lie like broken sacks of meat across the window sill. As the ones behind them tried to climb over them, they, too, were shot down and added their bodies to the mass that was starting to block up the opening.
At first elated that
this immediate threat was being solved, Steve’s spirits dropped at the thought that in the long run it wouldn’t matter. With the huge mob of dead coming at them from the east, and with the weak spot the window now presented, they would be overrun that much quicker when the herd arrived.
Trying to find a way to somehow turn this
disaster to their advantage, a thought struck him. To have planned their escape in the way he was thinking would have been insanity, but since it was happening, he knew he had to go with it.
“
We’ve got to keep them back away from the window,” he yelled. “If we block it up, it might not attract enough of them.” As the three of them moved forward, firing as they went, he said, “We can still turn this in our favor. With all the noise and the shooting, we’ll draw the ones away from the front of the mansion. Once we’ve got them clustered up back here, we head out the front.”
“We
’ll be able to get to the trucks that way and -” Heather said with excitement before stopping abruptly when a thought came to her. With trepidation, she asked, “And who’s going to stay back here and keep drawing them in? No matter how many Zs we get to come to the back of the house, there’s still going to be a bunch clustered around the front. Even more if we all cut and run at the same time. We’ve seen too many times how fast they moved back to where they were when we tried to draw them off. Once everyone makes a break for it, whoever’s left behind will be cut off.”
Distracted by some of the dead that had gotten too close, she turned her attention to firing into the heads of the
Zs. In the pit of her stomach, though, she had a sinking feeling she knew who would volunteer. Shaking it off, she focused on her targets and didn’t repeat the question, lest she get an answer she didn’t want to hear.
Steve considered the wall of dead flesh only feet away, knowing he had already made his mind up on who would stay. Glad Heather’s attention was taken by the dead, he considered his own demise.
He knew his plan had one fatal flaw, and that was while everyone was going out the front, one person needed to stay and keep the Zs interested in the back of the mansion. His thoughts turned to when he had sat at his desk at the radio station only days after this had all started while contemplating ending his own life. Instead of putting his pistol under his chin and pulling the trigger, though, he had resolved that if it ever came to it, he would take as many of the dead things with him as he could when he went. He considered that decision every day in a world ruled by the living dead and felt that this would be the time.
Ignoring Heather’s question, he turned his head and yelled
, “Brain, get everyone to the front of the house and get one of your grenades ready. We’re changing the plan. I want everyone at the top of the stairs and ready to go out the front.”
“Out the front?”
he questioned. “A grenade?”
Steve
said tersely, “We’re going out the front. The grenade is for the doors since we don’t have time to fuck around with pulling the boards off. Now move your ass.”
As Brain turned to go, a sudden thought struck him and he yelled for
him to wait. Turning to Tick-Tock as his friend fired into the mass of dead that they had forced back a little more than ten feet from the window, he asked, “How much ammo do you have?”
Without taking his eyes off the Zs
as he clenched the pistol grip of his rifle with one hand and continued to fire, Tick-Tock felt his ammunition pouches strapped to the harness he had taken from the National Guard MRAP and the cargo pockets on his pants before saying, “I’ve got about four clips left, plus the one in my rifle.”