Beyond the Barriers (Novella): Ghouls (26 page)

Roz paused but I motioned her on. There was no point in here trying to be a hero with no weapon.

A shuffler jumped.

I ripped the wrench up in an arc that terminated with the bastards head. He went down, but it was a temporary respite. There were dozens of dead on our heels.

More gun shots and I used what little energy I had left to sprint forward until I reached Roz. I touched her shoulder.

“Just like last night, eh?”

“Fuck this!” she said in reply.

It wouldn’t be long now and I didn’t even have a gun to finish me and Roz off before they got us. The horde was going to rip us apart.

Gunshots from ahead and several Z’s fell. More shots and more bodies dropped.

Holy shit! The cavalry had arrived.

A full contingent of military advanced on our position. Beautiful men and women in full combat gear and packing enough heat to start a war in some third world country.

I did the smart thing and dropped to my knees, dragging Roz down with me.

It was over in seconds. They must have fired five or six hundred rounds but they stopped the horde in its tracks. Even a shuffler, so frightening to us before, was taken down with at least half a dozen bullets.

The trek to the base wasn’t as hectic now that help had arrived.

The guy that had rescued us and killed Craig talked to someone that looked like they were in charge. He pointed at us and at the helicopter. A group broke away and headed toward the transport no doubt to see if it was worth trying to fix before being overrun with dead.

The grass here was trampled flat. There was a road running near the base but it was packed with military transports either coming or going. Engines rumbled around us and it felt good to not only be alive but to be back near something resembling civilization with living people moving around.

The guy met us as we stumbled to the bases entrance and he didn’t look happy. He’d handed over Christy to one of the men at the gate. He spoke to the man for a few seconds then shrugged the listless body off his shoulder. Another soldier joined them and helped carry Christy into the base.

The man spun on us.

“Listen to me and listen well. This ain’t fucking lala land. You know that if you been in the city for any amount of time. There is a shit storm of hate just waiting to suck us all in and we can’t take any chances. Got that? No chances. On any other day I’d leave all of you to the dead. That stunt almost cost us all our lives. You do some shit like that again and I’ll put a bullet in your head myself.”

“You didn’t have to do it!” I yelled back. This guy could have been a fucking admiral for all I cared. All I wanted to do was kick his ass.

“This base is secure. No one with a hint of the virus gets in but they get out. In pieces.”

“Fucking asshole,” I said.

Joel touched my shoulder to pull me back but I wasn’t having it. This guy was tall and he looked commanding but I was still a hell of a lot bigger than him. I hefted the wrench but Joel pushed my hand down. I looked at him and he shook his head.

“I am that, but I’m also one alive fucking asshole. Now do yourself a favor and stay alive too. We need every able body we can find. Don’t forget. I’m the one who rescued you.”

“Oh I won’t forget everything you’ve done. What’s your name, anyway?” I gritted my teeth.

He turned to leave, snake skin boots kicking up dirt as he strolled away. He looked over his shoulder and fixed me with his eyes.

“Names Lee and that’s all you need to know for now. Good luck, soldier,” he said and strolled into a gate that opened for him.

“I’m gonna kill that son-of-a-bitch,” I muttered.

“Get in line,” Joel said.

Together with Roz, the injured gunner named Sails, and Joel, we limped into the base before the sliding chain link fence rattled closed.

S
upplies
:

• Food: warm and enough to fill our guts
  
• Weapons: plenty to go around
  
• Attitude: I want to punch stuff
  

* * *

A
ll through our
lousy time on Roz’s garage roof, I thought we were going to die. I thought we were going to slowly starve to death or the Z’s would figure out a way to get at us. Instead we were rescued. The dead were doing their best to batter down the house and even succeeded, once the chopper arrived. I don’t know if it was all the noise or us being visible. They went into a frenzy and smashed down the damn walls as we flew away.

The entry to the base was so heavily fortified that we had to be escorted in. Every couple of feet there was a pole covered in razor wire and a lot of that wire was covered in flesh, blood splatters, and strips of clothing. It was the perfect trap. If some of the shamblers made it as far as the base, a lot of them would get hung up, then shot by the heavily armed guards patrolling the massive chain-link gate.

The entrance had fortifications and machine guns. Big fuckers with barrels large enough to take down any target on foot. Men and women stood at guard or knelt and stared down barrels. A few shot us dirty looks. Not my fault! I wanted to protest but it seemed prudent to get my smelly ass into the base and blend in, then figure out how to introduce Lee to my eight pounds of wrench.

As we approached the entrance a squad met us. They had an apparatus similar to the one Lee had used. They didn’t point guns at us but they looked ready to draw and shoot at the slightest hint of trouble.

After getting the eye treatment we were escorted to a table where a woman took our name and a drop of blood.

“Does the blood tell you if we got it?”

“Maybe,” she replied. She looked tired under a mess of black hair.

“That’s reassuring,” I said.

“I wish we knew more but we don’t. We just look for certain anti-bodies. It’s easier to see with the magnifying glass. The disease sets up shop and causes clots. Clots show up as red spots. The clots die and the eyes turn white.”

“Thanks for the lesson, Doc.” Joel said.

“Oh, I’m no doctor.” She attempted to smile and then went back to writing notes on a pad of paper.

They tagged us with some numbers and sent us on our way in the general direction of food and water. I limped behind Joel on my screaming ankle.

By the gates were a huge pile of fence sections and a couple of pieces of heavy equipment, including a huge bulldozer and a crane.

Our rescue had been messy, but that’s been life since we arrived in Undeadville, USA. At the time I was actually hopeful that when we set foot on the chopper, our would-be rescuer, Lee, would take us to safety. All of us, not just some of us. Then that fucker threw Craig out of the chopper like he was a bag of trash.

The question ate away at me, though. Was Craig one of them? If we’d been stuck on that roof for a few more days would he have changed? It’s possible, but he said he was fine, even if he was tired and just plain out of it. Since we’d found the kids they’d been sorta upbeat all things considered.

I didn’t see any bite marks on Craig so how the hell had it happened? Was the disease being spread by some new mechanism? For the last ten days we’d seen men and women bitten, look horrified, and within moments become one of the Z’s. Now there was a new way for victims to carry the virus?

After the chopper crash, they let us in the front gate. From the looks, as we hauled ass toward safety, I had a feeling they wanted to send us a bill and make us haul the remains of the chopper inside the base.

I was happy that the pilot and co-pilot weren’t near us. I was afraid they’d point the finger at us and say it was our fault. The entire battle inside the chopper had taken half a minute. Then we’d struck the ground. I asked Joel Kelly later if he’d ever been in anything like that before.

“A chopper crash? Shit. Been in a few. That one wasn’t bad. I’d call it a shaker, but not quite a bone rattler.”

I grinned back at his grin and wondered if he was bullshitting me. Only a boneshaker? When we hit it felt like someone had picked me up and thrown me against a brick wall.

Roz moved alongside us while Christy fell into step but she kept glancing over her shoulder as we made our way toward the base.

“Don’t think about it,” Roz said.

“What if he’s okay? We weren’t that high; maybe Craig hit something soft.” Christy whined from behind us.

“He didn’t survive.” Roz fell back a step and put a hand around his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Christy shrugged it off and moved a few feet away.

“Nothing we can do about it now except get that son of a bitch that killed Craig.” I tried to sound reassuring.

“He’s out there. I know it,” she said. “Everyone else in my life is dead. Craig was all I had left.”

She had a point, but I couldn’t think of anything to say so I let her talk.

“We didn’t ask for this. None of this. I shouldn’t even be here. I should be home doing school work or playing video games with my friends. I’m so sick of this. So sick of all of this. I hate this world.”

“Yeah. Me too. But you gotta go on and honor Craig’s memory. If you’re gone who’s going to remember him?” I asked.

When we were all gone, who would remember us?

“You guys lost?”

I turned to find an unexpected face. With her helmet off she wasn’t bad looking, in an “I’ll rip your balls off if you cross me” way that I kinda liked. What I didn’t like was the fact that she’d helped Lee kill a kid. I also didn’t like that she’d hit me hard enough to make me see stars. I guess I could forgive the second one with enough time.

“Well look who it is,” I said and came to my full height.

She looked up at me but wasn’t intimidated. She didn’t look mad or sad. In fact, she had no expression at all.

“Yeah. Look who it is. You guys looking for a shower and chow? Because you need it.”

Roz crossed her arms and stared at Sails. Sails met her gaze and didn’t flinch.

I leaned over and whispered in Joel’s ear, “Girl fight, bro.”

He pushed me off.

“You seen Lee?” I asked Sails.

“No. If you want to thank him I’ll pass along your message. Do yourself a favor and let it go. It sucks, but it was for the best,” she said and moved away.

Joel got in her face.

“It was for the best? He was just a kid. What if it was your kid, huh?”

“It was my kids, but now they’re gone. If you’ll excuse me,” she said and moved away.

Shit.

Joel looked like he wanted to say something but he didn’t. Anna glanced between us and didn’t say a word before moving off into the crowd.

The base of operations was made up of a hospital and a bunch of smaller buildings. People scurried around, most of them armed. I hadn’t seen so many people in one place in a long time and it was comforting.

Hand painted signs hung on hastily constructed signposts indicating in which way lay food and supplies. I spotted one in particular and almost broke into tears.

‘Showers.’

I smacked Joel and pointed. He nodded but couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the departing figure of Anna Sails.

“You like that?”

“I’m not happy, bro.”

“Join the fucking club.”

I pointed at a sign that read “food” and we moved toward it.

“Chow first. Then I’m going to shower so long I turn into a giant prune.”

“Squids and water,” Joel said and then led the way.

They fed us in an overcrowded mess hall filled with a mix of military, military wannabes, and civvies. There were lines drawn, like a prison mess hall. A group of survivalist types complete with “been in the mountains for months” beards sat near a couple of families but the groups didn’t look at each other. The military men and women strutted around with weapons on open display.

“Pass the salt?” a man asked me.

He sat with four kids and a wife who hovered over the little ones while they ate dry cereal and stared around the room with wide eyes.

The kitchen had canned supplies and boxes containing even more boxes of crackers. There were five-gallon jugs of bug juice and sliders that tasted like slimy vegetarian fake meat. I don’t know where they got the stuff but my stomach thanked me. My guts weren’t so happy an hour later but I rode it out and then came back and begged for more. I’m not a little guy and it takes a lot to feed this zombie killing machine.

The rest of the partially formed base was obviously in transition when we arrived. A steady stream of cars and trucks roared into and out of the base. There was a constant unholy racket of helicopters thumping at the sky as they roared in and then back out. Most delivered supplies but a lot of them carried away people. Folks that were dressed in civvies and carried bags or stuffed suit cases. Where was everyone headed? If it was somewhere safe I wanted to go there now.

Like the empty field we’d flown over yesterday this place had tents everywhere. They told us to go to some section that me nor Joel Kelly could make heads or tails of. Might as well have been some Sudoku puzzle for all the sense it made.

I wasn’t complaining. I can’t say how relieved I am that I’m somewhere surrounded by guns and people who know how to use them. The food might not be the best but it was food. I’ve been so hungry over the last ten days I’m sure I’ve lost about fifteen pounds.

We ate and tried to talk but we didn’t get a lot of answers. I turned to the guy that had asked for the salt and asked him what was happening in the world. How far had the virus spread? Were all of the other states affected?

“When the televisions and radio stations died we lost touch with the outside world and just waited. We ran out of food a few days ago and started moving around. A convoy found us and rescued me and the family. Thank god for the military.”

“So you don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the world?” I had so many questions but everyone I talked to had a similar answer. Even the military guys didn’t know what was going on.

One thing I learned was that there’d been mass desertion, as the enlisted grew worried about families and just left their posts and stations.

“All I know is I got food and water and a warm place for my family. That’s good enough for me.” He turned away.

I resisted the urge to grab him by the shirt collar and demand answers. Instead I snapped my plastic fork in half. I probably just needed to go find a place to curl up and sleep for the rest of the day. First we needed to spend some time trying to clean off two weeks of blood and filth.

The tent was huge and sectioned off for men and women.

It wasn’t warm and the soap were cakes of white with other people’s hair in them. I didn’t care, and judging by the sounds of others near me (including Roz, who hummed a song in a bad falsetto) no one else did either.

Not much of a shower, but I was left grinning and shivering. Piles of clothing, most of it military, were in a corner. I pawed through it until I found something big enough to fit me. Must have been someone’s shitty idea of a joke because the only pants my size were a pair of old dungarees that were loose in the waist and too short by a few inches, but they were better than my beat to hell overalls. The shirt was digital camo and had enough arm pockets to hold a few odds and ends. I filled one with .45 ammo and another with 9mm.

I strapped my trusty .45 around my waist, then grabbed a huge pea coat and fell into it. Warmth eventually set in while we stood around talking about the wonders of running water. Christy looked dour and when Roz suggested looking for a bed we followed.

“Sleep. I need a week of it,” I said.

“Me too, man. I’m as tired as I’ve been in my whole damn life. Even boot wasn’t this much work.”

Together we went to find a couple of cots.

* * *

R
oz and Christy
found a cot and a sleeping bag right next to each other; no one else had claimed them, so they settled in. Joel and I nodded at Roz and moved on to find a corner of our own.