Apocalypse Asunder (14 page)

“Sweetie, just keep walking.” Jessica said, looking behind them again.  Austin was making better time than she had when her knee had been banged up.  The gap between them and the horde was steadily opening.  Facing forward again, Jessica started eying the houses for a likely candidate as she absently patted her daughter on the back.

“That one.” she said, pointing with the Shield at a house that had a chain link fence enclosing it on two sides.  The open style fence meant she could easily see the front and side yards, confirming they were empty of any zombies.  At the back of the back yard, she could see a solid fence bordering the yard of the house behind it.  It looked climbable to her; it wasn’t too tall.

Austin nodded.  Jessica stayed in step with him, resisting the urge to ask him if he could go any faster.  She knew it was just nerves that made her feel like she should be running.  She’d been here before, on foot, being followed by zombies.  Then she’d been less armed, less able, and in almost too much pain to keep moving.  This wasn’t as bad.  Austin was faster than she’d been in the same circumstance, and she’d learned a lot about how to handle zombies since then.

“We’re getting out of this.”
she thought fiercely. 
“The hell we aren’t.”

Right as she thought that, she noticed movement at the end of the block they were proceeding down.  Squinting a little, she suppressed a groan of frustration when she saw more zombies.  She didn’t bother to count; it was dozens.  Maybe not a full on ‘horde’, but more than enough to be a problem.  And they were already headed in this direction; rounding the corner from two directions and aiming unsteadily right down the street at she and Candice and Austin.

“Come on.” Jessica said, tugging the gate open and holding it from closing for Austin to go through.  The big man didn’t stop; he just kept moving for the house’s back yard.  Jessica shooed Candice in after him, then went through and tugged the gate closed behind her.  Dropping the latch, she looked around quickly but didn’t see anything that she could use to help jam it closed.  Maybe it wouldn’t matter.  She hoped not anyway; they only needed to slow the zombies a little.  And zombies were already slow as it was.

But there were so many of the persistent bastards.

“Contact, five, forward.” Austin said loudly.  She turned from the fence just in time to see his first shot.  She couldn’t see what he was shooting at – it was behind the house and she didn’t have the angle to spot it – but he fired several more times as he slowed to an even odder looking tactical walk.

The power walk he’d been using was fast and rolled his hips back and forth; this was slower, and involved him mostly bending from the waist and walking only from the knees down.  His upper body was very stable, which let him fire smoothly and cleanly.  She’d seen him do it before.  As strange as it looked, she knew it worked.  Unfortunately it was something she hadn’t gotten the hang of yet.

Jessica felt Candice’s hands fluttering around the left side of her belt as the girl jogged along next to her mother; heard the girl’s breath coming fast and high, making little panting noises of anxiety.  Catching up with Austin, Jessica spotted the zombies.  Two were down, and a third toppled as she stopped and raised her pistol.  Her first shot missed, and the next two ripped a pair of ugly looking holes in the dead woman’s shoulder, but by then Jessica had calmed down and found her center.

The fourth shot snapped the zombie’s head back, punching through just to the side of the creature’s nose.  A shower of
things
erupted from the back of its skull, but Jessica scarcely took note.  It was down, and not moving.  That’s all that mattered right now.

“Clear.” Austin said as he killed the last zombie in unison with her finally dealing with her target.

Jessica pulled her attention from the pistol’s sights and looked around.  There was a pool back here that had a scattering of trash and debris in it; some floating, some sullenly submerged at the bottom.  There was a body in the water as well, face down and looking like it’d been there for quite some time.  She figured it was probably a dead zombie, judging by how unchewed on it looked.  Its flesh was heavily bloated though, and stained an odd color from the long exposure to the pool water’s chemicals.

“Reload the magazine.” Austin said as she completed her check of the yard and saw nothing else wrong.  Just foot high Bermuda grass that was trampled some, but no other active zombies.  Nothing that looked like a threat, not even on a second check.

“Right.” Jessica nodded, reaching behind her and pulling the extra magazine from the loop on the Shield’s holster.  With it in hand, she fingered the release on the pistol and caught the partially spent magazine as it dropped clear.  Replacing it with the fresh one, she safed the pistol and holstered it to free her hands, then dug in her purse for extra bullets.

She’d practiced all things gun related – a lot – but it still took her longer than she liked to feed four fresh bullets into the magazine.  By the time she had them in place, Austin had made it to the back fence and was gesturing at Candice.  “Come over here girlie-girl, take a look at the other side for us.”

“What?  No!” Jessica said in alarm when she heard that.  Candice had tightened her fingers on Jessica’s shirt, and was shaking from head to toe as Jessica glanced up from the magazine.

“Just a look.” Austin said reasonably.  “Just a quick look to tell us what’s on the other side of the fence.”

“
I’ll
look.” Jessica said, stuffing the reloaded magazine into the carry slot on the holster and jogging over to him.  Candice was not going over the wall first.  No way.

“Fine.” he said, putting his back to the wall and bending some so one of his legs formed a sort of stepping point.  Patting his thigh, he gestured at her.  “Hurry up though.”

A creaking groan of bending metal came from the front yard.  Jessica didn’t look; she knew what that was.  The chain link wasn’t going to hold up against hundreds of bodies pushing on it.  Not for very long anyway.  Zombies did things their own way.  A human crowd might take some time to figure out they had enough combined mass and strength to knock the fence down; zombies just kept right on rolling without pause.

Single minded bastards.

Stepping up on Austin’s thigh, Jessica felt his hands close in around her waist and lift as she stretched for the top of the wall.  Her fingers got a grip and pulled as he assisted, getting herself levered up to where she could find purchase with one of her elbows.  That let her heave herself high enough to see over the wall.  He grunted, but his strength didn’t falter as he lifted and held her up.

Several dozen dead faces stared back at her from the yard beyond the wall, hands upstretched in her direction.  The eyes were fixed on her with a familiar intensity that she still hadn’t gotten used to; unsettling with determination. Devoid of everything but hunger. Jessica let out a scream and slipped as her grip loosened.  Austin’s fingers tightened on her waist and he grunted again as he took her full weight to keep her from falling.

“Let me down!  Let me down!” Jessica yelled.  She barely even remembered that, however light she might be, putting him in a position to need to carry her like this wasn’t likely doing his bullet wounds any favors.

He lowered her to the ground, breathing heavily.  She knew it had to be from pain – he’d lifted her before, and in more awkward positions, without showing the slightest sign of strain – but there was too much going on for her to consider how well he might be doing.  He was still on his feet, that was all that mattered at the moment.

As long as he stayed up, that’s what mattered.

“Zombies.”

“How many?” he panted.

“Too many.” she said tightly.

“We either hop over and take them on, go sideways over one of the other fences, or make a break for the house and fight from in there.” he told her.

Jessica looked at the side yard as the first of the pursuing zombie horde came into view and headed toward the humans.  The zombies were staggering along the side of the house, across the side yard to the back.  There were maybe, maybe, ten seconds to decide.  The house had big sliding glass doors opening out onto the back porch.  Getting inside quickly wouldn’t be a problem.

She still didn’t like the idea of being trapped though.

“Can you climb the chain link if we go this way?” Jessica asked, pointing at the other side of the yard, the one furthest from the encroaching zombies.

“Yes.” he said.  His voice was firm, but she heard an undertone of pain in it.  And his face was a touch pale.  But there was nothing for it.  Staying was death.

“This way.” Jessica said breaking into a run for the escape route she’d indicated.  “Candice, can you go over, or do you need me to go first and help you down?”

“I can do it.” the girl said, her voice afraid, but intent.

“Be careful.  Don’t fall.” Jessica said, bending and lifting her daughter up.  She grunted herself as she took her daughter’s weight, but adrenaline was an amazing thing, and she managed without faltering.  Candice grabbed onto the top bar of the chain link fencing as Jessica steadied and held her high enough.

“Hang on to the fence, climb down, don’t jump down.” she said as the girl gripped the bar and went over.  One of them twisting an ankle would not help matters.  Especially not Candice.  The ten-year-old had proven to be remarkably resilient in the face of a lot of horror, but expecting her to walk through the pain of a turned ankle might be asking too much.  Jessica didn’t want to find out unless there was no other choice.

But Candice got down on the far side without incident.  Jessica, though, jumped as Austin spoke from almost directly behind her.  She kicked herself as she realized she’d stopped paying full attention to what was going on behind her while she helped Candice.

“Your turn.”

“Jesus.” Jessica breathed, trying to keep her pulse rate from spiraling out of control.

“Sorry.  No time though, up you go.”  Austin linked his hands and put his back to the fence.  “Up, use my shoulder if you need to, and get over so you can climb down like she did.” he said.

Jessica stepped into his hands and grabbed for the top of the fence as he lifted her with a painful grunt.  When she had hold of it, she planted one foot on his shoulder like he’d said, then got the other on the bar.  Balancing against him, she managed to swivel around and get herself hanging from the far side of the fence.  It was taller than she was, but not so much that she couldn’t just drop down easily.  She had nearly two feet in height on her daughter.

The zombie horde was rounding the pool, with plenty more behind the leaders.  Some of them were going over the pool’s edge and into the water, but many more were flooding around it and making right for the three juicy humans.  Jessica’s hand closed on the Shield and drew it from the holster at the small of her back.  “Austin, hurry.” she said, stepping to the side and bringing the pistol up in both hands.

“I know.” he grunted, moving sideways in the opposite direction, toward one of the fence posts.  He grabbed for the top of the fence and planted one of his feet against it as he started pulling himself up.

“Mom . . .” Candice said, sounding more than a little panicked as zombies closed toward them.

“I know.” Jessica told the girl as she lined her sights up on a zombie in the front edge of the pack, commanding herself to ignore everything except where the three dots on the pistol were pointing.  Two in the back, one in the front, align them and squeeze.

Nothing else mattered at the moment.  Not what to do next, not how bad things looked, not how angry or scared or alarmed or disappointed she was over what was happening.  Aim, point, fire.  Just do it.  The pistol bucked lightly in her hands almost of its own accord, and the swarthy skinned zombie she’d been aiming at went down.  She tried to find another one, but everything she aimed at that was already in line was stumbling and falling.

Pulling her gaze back from the sights just a bit, she saw zombies were tripping over the one she’d shot.  Feeling foolish – that was just about the best possible result, and she should have been expecting it – she tracked left and found a zombie that was walking steadily.  Well, as steadily as any zombie really got.

Just as she fired, she felt Candice plucking at the hem of her shirt.  “Mom, come on.  Mom.  Mom!”

Jessica looked around as another zombie toppled – taking several more behind it down as well – and saw Austin was on this side of the fence.  His breath was coming with difficulty, and despite the tough front he was putting to the fore of his expression, she could see the pain he was in.  It was visible in the way his face creased, in how the skin at the corner of his eyes crinkled and the way the back of his jaw was clenching.

“We should have gone for the house.” she said quickly, feeling bad.  If he’d pulled something inside, if he’d started bleeding internally . . .

“Chain link’s harder to climb than a regular fence.  It moves more.” Austin panted.  “Easier to get a grip, but harder to hang on to without having to stabilize.”

“This way.” she said, indicating the front of the house.

“Gate?”

“Yes.  Let’s avoid any more climbing if possible.” she said, heading for the front yard at a jog.

“What about that second pack?”