Beyond the Barriers (Novella): Ghouls (17 page)

I rushed out the door, expecting the worse.

The shuffler was on his back in the pile of the dead. He twitched, then rolled over and cackled. His hand went to his mouth while he considered me. The man’s hair hung in clumps over his forehead. His face was covered in blood and gore. His clothing was just as soaked in crimson.

He bit off one of his fingers while he stared from milky eyes that had the oddest hint of green. It was like they glowed with some otherworldly intelligence.

Joel staggered to his feet and for a moment I feared he’d been bitten and was already turning, but he pulled his Marine combat knife. Then he took a step toward the shuffler. Oh, I get it. This was one of those Marine things that I should stay out of. Joel was only interested in finishing the monster.

The shuffler leapt. Sure, I could have let Joel Kelly, Marine superman take the shuffler, and with any luck Joel would come out the victor. But I’d had enough of this entire scouting mission. I swung hard and caught the shuffler in the side, changing his reality in mid leap from forward momentum to crushed bones and flailing limbs. The creature howled and fell into an awkward tangle.

Joel advanced but I lifted the .45 and shot the son of a bitch in the head. Twice.

Fuck that guy.

Joel staggered into me and got an arm around my shoulder.

“If you bite me I’m going to be really fucking disappointed, Joel Kelly.”

“He didn’t get me. He just hit me hard enough to make me see stars. Thanks, man. I didn’t think I’d be able to take him.”

“So what, you just judo-threw him or something?”

“Got my gun around and cracked him upside the head. He fell back on the pile, but goddamn – that thing was fast. And strong.”

“So this is my reward? A Marine hug. If you kiss me I’m going to hit you with my really big wrench.”

Joel laughed and punched me in the shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise. Such a kidder, that guy.

“I think Monster Ken is still alive in there.”

“Yeah?”

I grinned and went in but kept low in case Ken’d gotten lucky with the dead lady.

The only sounds were his calls for help.

I advanced quietly on the kitchen and poked my head in to see even more squalor. There were wrappers everywhere. Empty water bottles. Rotting meat in the sink. What kind of meat, I had no interest in discovering.

The rapist twitched. Shit, didn’t I kill that son of a bitch?

Joel came in and covered me. He pointed his assault rifle at the woman on the couch but I shook my head.

“Enough shooting for one day. We gotta move, buddy. Our thirty seconds ended about five minutes ago.”

“What about dickless in there?”

I poked my head around the corner and saw that the Z was on top of Ken. She had knocked him down and he must have hit something hard because his right arm was at a bad angle. I ducked in and snagged his gun. It was a Sig Sauer P229 and that seemed like a hell of a sexy gun.

“How’s it going, Ken?” I asked.

He turned blazing eyes on me as he tried to fight off the woman. She got her mouth into his shoulder and ripped up. Ken screamed.

“Don’t be such a fucking pansy,” I said and went back to the living room.

The guy I hit twitched and one eye opened. The other had been crushed in by my wrench.

Joel grabbed the rapist and dragged him while I untied the woman and led her into the kitchen by the rope. She was covered in wounds and barely put up a struggle. She didn’t have any clothing on, but the last thing I wanted to do was look at the twin horrors that were her tits.

“Hey Joel. It’s an orgy,” I said and pushed her toward Ken.

Joel dragged the other rapist in and tossed him onto the pile. The naked girl went at him. She ripped up his shirt and dug her mouth into his soft belly. Even with his head half bashed in, the man managed to open his eyes and start muttering “no no no” over and over again.

“Hansi,” Ken yelled and reached for his friend.

Movement at the front of the house. I risked a look to confirm it was the faster pack we’d seen a few minutes ago right outside the house. So Ken really had led a bunch of Z’s here just to protect his home. Did he think he’d be able to overpower them and us when it was all over? Was Ken really enough of a Z survivor to take us all down?

Joel pointed at the back door and I nodded. We hustled and slipped out, hurrying past the pile of dead. We found the side of the house and hid next to the fence. A minute later the street cleared, so we moved out.

Behind me, the screams went on for a long time.

I couldn’t stop smiling.

* * *

W
e crouched
near Fortress and watched for a full ten minutes. Joel kept his eye on the house while I watched out back. The backyard we’d picked for our reconnaissance had a kid’s playground. There was a trampoline with a body on it. The sides were covered in mesh so no one would fall out. Now it was a weird grave for the man that had blown his brains out while lying on it.

The yard also had a bunch of tall bushes we frequently used for cover.

A few days ago we’d gone into this home to look for supplies. We’d only turned up a few small bags of dried beans on the top shelf of the pantry. Someone had beaten us to this place.

We’d found the family in one room. A woman, presumably the mother, had been lain out on the bed with a pair of small bodies. The covers were pulled up and cloths placed over their faces. Someone had shot all three of them. My money was on the guy on the trampoline. After that, we never went into the house again. It was a mausoleum now.

Satisfied that no one was raiding Fortress, we went home.

* * *

“
E
mpty-handed
,” I muttered as we used a few precious baby wipes to clean up back at Fortress.

I lit a Sterno can and contemplated the spinach.

“I’ll eat one if you eat one,” Joel challenged.

“Christ. I guess it’s come to this.”

The cans took a few minutes to warm up but not so long to devour. Tasted like shit but it was better than being belly up at Ken’s house. Joel was smart and suggested adding a little bit of our precious supply of rice to the containers for the carbs. My gut rolled over but I was hungry enough to ignore the taste. The house hadn’t had a lot of food when we claimed it, but we’d found a box of chicken bouillon cubes and they’d gone in just about everything we attempted to cook.

“What the hell, man?” I finally spoke after we sat in silence for a few moments.

“Don’t even get me started.”

“Who does that shit? Who?”

“Monster Ken.”

“Yeah. Well, Monster Ken is a real monster now. I hope that jerk is wandering around tomorrow so we can kill him again.”

“We didn’t actually finish our sweep yesterday. Head back?” Joel grinned.

“I like how you think, buddy,” I smiled and hit Joel in the arm hard enough to leave a bruise.

He choked back a gasp and then looked stoic.

I went to bed with a smile on my face for the first time in days.

I guess the fucking zombie apocalypse could be worse.

W
hy in the
hell did we ever leave? There is a reason I named this place Fortress and leaving it was never a good idea. Unfortunately, Joel made a very convincing argument that we needed to return to the San Diego Naval base for supplies. He used small words like "we need food and ammo, you dumb squid." 

Joel never listened to my ideas. I’d made a few but I was sick and tired of the Marine giving me a ration of shit for every single one of them.

“Let’s go raid cars.”

“Bad idea,” he’d say. “Could be the wrong car is full of dead.”

Could be? Sure, but we’re good at killing them. Real good. If there was an Olympics held today for how to kill Z's, we'd at least win the bronze.

“Let’s go find a house with an abandoned hot tub so we can take a bath.”

“Then we’d be caught with our pants down.” Jesus, he could be such a drag.

“Let’s go find other survivors.”

“They’ll just steal our stuff or maybe try to eat us.” On second thought, that one actually made sense.

"Christ, Joel. No one's going to eat us."

"Not yet. Wait until they haven't eaten for a few days," he said ominously. I dropped it.

Anyway, I would do my usual list of food supplies but I’m too pissed off right now so I’ll do it tomorrow. There’ll be less to write about by then if Roz has her say.

Yeah – Roz.

Weapons:

• 1 AR-15
  
• 3 30 round mags
  
• 97 Rounds of 5.56 ammo
  
• 1 Colt M45A1 Handgun
  
• 42 Rounds of .45 ammo
  
• 1 Sig Sauer P229
  
• 14 rounds of 9mm ammo
  
• 1 very large fucking wrench
  
• 1 12 gauge Remington pump action shotgun
  
• 4 12 gauge shells
  

The other night I finished up my entry regarding how Joel, Reynolds, and I escaped from the USS McClusky. As best as I could tell, of the 178 souls on board, only three of us managed to get off the ship before it smashed into the pier and exploded.

It was late and I was about to blow out my candle for the night when I heard something below. Night gets real quiet except for the occasional helicopter in the distance or an airplane too high to see. Every time I heard those I wondered if it was our time to die. I was surprised they hadn’t already nuked this dead fucking cesspool.

The noise was different than the Z’s that sometimes shamble by. This was more like someone on the move. Someone that has a purpose. But it was gone as soon as I’d convinced myself to get up and check it out.

Eventually I fell asleep but had my wrench within reach and the pistol tucked under my pillow. I may be one paranoid mother fucker but I’m also one very alive mother fucker.

Today we did the same thing as yesterday—broke down our weapons and cleaned them. I even took a cloth to my wrench head and got most of the blood, hair, and brain matter off of it.

After we’d bitched and bickered and then managed not to kill each other, I went to bed and considered rolling a joint. I didn’t, though, because as much as I love to give the Marine shit, I didn’t really want to let him down. And if I got high and some of those things got in here I might just giggle my ass off while I looked for something to kill them with.

I was dozing when I heard it again.

I was sure I’d heard voices and then something got knocked over. Shit! Now I knew I wasn’t crazy. I heard more voices and decided that if we had looters alerted to our location I should just go out there and scare them away. Now how fucking stupid is that? What was I going to do? Go out there dressed like a horrible monster? Those are a dime a dozen now. I’d be like “BOO!” And they’d be like “SHOOT IT!”

I felt around in the dark until I located my lighter, struck a flame, then fumbled around for my shirt. Joel had left his pair of NVG’s hanging on the wall so I grabbed those and slid them over my head. He’d be pissed if he found me wearing his toys. Joel always worried about how much juice the batteries had remaining. I worried about being killed by those fucking things out there, so I guess that made us kind of even.

Switching on the NVG’s brought the world into shades of green. I moved to a window and scanned the ground below. There were a few trees out there but most were so dry from the heat, they didn’t even have leaves. Bushes were easy to pick out. I could look out without the goggles and see a dozen things that scared the shit out of me.

I hovered for a few minutes just watching the ground a story below. When nothing materialized, I moved to the other side of the house. Joel was still snoring away behind his cracked door. I looked in and found him sprawled out on the mattress. The first thing Joel did when we took over the house was drag the mattress off the bed. I asked him why and he said he felt safer.

“A Marine scared of things under the bed?” I’d asked.

“Hey man. There are a lot of things out there to be scared about. This is one less.”

With the Night Vision Goggle over my eye I was able to move around the dark house with ease. I checked the other side of the house but didn’t see anything. I hovered by a window and listened for a good fifteen minutes but there was nothing.

Maybe I was just going stir crazy.

It took a half-second to wake up Joel. He was on his feet and reaching for his assault rifle so fast it was like he had a giant spring built in his ass. His room smelled like sweat and oil. That would be Joel and his best friend, an assault rifle.

“Shh,” I whispered. “I think someone’s outside.”

“Just leave the dead fucks be. They’ll wander away. Now let a brother get some shut eye.”

“I don’t know. It’s so quiet, maybe I was just hearing things, but these things sounded like voices.”

“Shit,” Joel said. “Lemme grab the NVGs.”

I handed them over. Good thing it was dark so I didn’t have to put up with a dirty look.

Joel grumped around doing Marine shit while I waited. I did a check of my side arm and ran through ammo, slide, and safety positioning. I had a full mag of 7 rounds and one in the chamber. One more mag went into a pocket and I dropped a handful of shells into my other. My lucky .45 round was still in its place right next to my hip. All I needed was my wrench and I was ready to bash some heads.

* * *

G
oing
outside meant navigating off the deck. There’s no other way in unless someone has a tool that can bust the front door off. We picked this place because it had one main entrance. We filled the entryway with crap like a sofa and then piled a few bodies on top. It made for a gruesome entry.

Next chapter I’ll write about Fortress, promise. That way, if my corpse is found, readers will understand what a pain in the ass this place was to secure and appreciate all the effort we went through.

You’re welcome.

The only dead that stopped by were ignored. If they got persistent Joel and I would drop cinder blocks on their heads. The blocks were attached to ropes so we could pull them back up. We had a pool going on weekly kills and I was up by three. The best part was trying to get their attention just before the block struck. They’d look up with that blank face, those white eyes, and then SPLAT!

Joel went out and stared into the dark for so long I thought he’d fallen asleep standing up. I waited and went over my gun again and again.

Joel had taught me to treat it like a girl with a rocking body. You want to know every inch of her because you can’t dream about her later unless you’ve been hands-on for hours.

“There’s no one out here.”

“Yeah. Now. There was a few minutes ago.”

“You been hitting the ganja?” Joel asked.

“Not today. I swear, man, I heard something.”

“They’re gone now. Get some sleep. We need to leave in a couple of hours.”

“Yeah. I’ll do my best.”

When Joel left I dragged my mattress next to the sliding glass door and left it cracked open so the breeze rolled over me, but also so I could hear anyone approaching. The thin bit of breeze helped, but I was a long way from anything resembling sleep. I tossed and turned as I strained to hear anything besides the occasional moan of one of the Z’s wandering around in the dark.

Finally I closed my eyes and drifted off, dreaming that I was back on the McClusky and the crew had been replaced by a team of bikini models all named Helen. Every one of them.

Joel’s hand on my shoulder tore me out of sleep.

“Ugh,” I muttered.

“Mission time,” he said and moved away.

I was tempted to just go back to sleep. Fuck exploration, it was the middle of the goddamn night. I sat up and rubbed what felt like sand out of my eyes.

While I suited up in my engineer overalls, Joel stood to the side of the deck entrance and scanned the area. He was already dressed in his combat gear. He checked his pockets one more time, pulling magazines out to do a visual inspection by the light of the moon. Satisfied, he stuffed them back into pouches at his chest and side, then secured them by pressing flaps in. Early on, we’d learned the hard way that the crackle of a Velcro pocket could bring a pack in seconds.

Joel dragged the ladder out and lowered it to the ground, moving it around until he was satisfied it had a good hold on the ground. He slung his AR-15 over his shoulder and then went down the ladder while I trained the .45 around the area. When he was on the ground, he covered for me.

We hid the ladder under a pile of brush and dragged a pair of rotting corpses on top to keep prying eyes on other things.

Our destination was the naval base. Joel had wanted to return for the past week, but the Z’s in the area had been too heavy. After some scouting earlier today we determined that it might be safe to slip in, find some warehouse he knew about, commandeer a car, and get the fuck back to dodge, all before the night was over. We really needed to load up on ammo and maybe another weapon or two. If we got stuck with our current weapon pool, I doubted we’d be able to shoot our way out of a wet paper bag before we ran out of rounds.

Fucking zombies. I hate them.

Joel scouted ahead while I brought up the rear. I grumbled but a look from the Marine reminded me that it was time to get serious. One misstep out in this world and we’d be dead meat.

I did find that with night came something amazing. Cold air. It rolled off the water and reminded me of what it was like before we ended up stuck in Fortress. Going out like this was familiar. We’d already done it half a dozen times and we were still alive. The other thing that I found was the smell of decay. It was everywhere. Trash and bodies rotting in the sun made for a disgusting reek that clung to everything.

The idea was to remain quiet. As quiet as a sleeping baby. Any loud noises and you were likely to call in a pack of the dead. Not that they actually traveled together, because they had no thoughts in their heads. They reacted to some bizarre need to find live flesh. I liked my flesh right where it was – on my bones.

Joel stopped alongside a house and then faded against the wall. He moved around the corner with me right behind. Joel held up a hand and I stopped in my tracks. He did something with his NVG’s and then motioned for me to advance.

I crept around the corner and stopped as well.

Joel signaled for me to creep forward, then stopped me when I was a few feet away. He turned and put his fingers to his lips. Joel slipped the NVG’s off his head and handed them to me. I slid my handgun into the holster, took the glasses and slipped them over my head. He had his eyes closed but pointed at the garage. Curious about what the hell he wanted to show me, I moved toward it in the half crouch I’d seen him pull off many times. He made it look easy but I was a lot bigger. Shit was not easy.

The world jumped to life in hues and shades of green. The house was a single story rambler with the remains of a broken fence scattered all over the lawn. The front door hung off its hinges and a corpse lay on the small concrete patio. Even in the pale light of the moon, I could tell that his form had been torn to shreds. A rifle lay next to him. Other bodies littered the patio. It appeared the guy had done his best to fend for his home, but in the end, the Z’s got him.

The garage door was stuck half-open but that wasn't what made me freeze in my tracks. It was the sounds.

If I didn't know any better I’d have guessed there was some kind of feast underway in the garage. Maybe a barbecue in San Diego. Just another night for some civilian (or more likely, military) family.

What I saw was anything but.

I lowered myself to a crouch and moved my head around the corner of the house. The walls were stacked with boxes and some old furniture had been pushed into corners. A bike hung from the ceiling. That’s where “normal” ended.

In the center of the room sat four figures. They were dressed in rags and slicked with something wet; even with the NVG’s, I knew it was blood. One gazed up at the wall from its meal. I stifled a gasp when I realized the Z had been chewing on his own fingers. One of the four was an overweight woman missing most of her clothes. She sat and gibbered to herself while also chewing on the ends of her fingers. I don’t mean nibbled, either. She had literally devoured them. A couple of teens rounded out the family from hell.