Beyond the Barriers (Novella): Ghouls (3 page)

“
W
hat the hell
?” Scott asked as I approached the wreck he was inspecting. If we could get it out of the way we’d have a chance.

“Chris got antsy.” I shot back. I turned to the others. “We may have company soon. Get the rest ready. Load up on whatever weapons there are and keep guard while we figure out how to escape this cluster fuck.”

They nodded and headed back to the Stryker. Scott joined me as I went to the first car, which was just a rust hulk. From the marks on the side it looked like someone had tried to force it off the road. In doing so, they had left it blocking the shoulder.

Three of the tires were more or less full of air and the other was flat. I tried the door but it wouldn’t budge. Scott took my cue and smashed the window on the passenger side, then backed up with the sight trained on the interior. When nothing jumped out at us except for the smell of rot, he opened the door, leaned in, nose wrinkled, and unlocked my side.

There were no keys and I didn’t feel like going over the car. There was a shape in the back, on the floor, that didn’t move. I had no desire to find out what it was. I tried to turn the engine over but it just clicked. On the next try it made a screeching noise but the engine didn’t start.

“You thought it would be that easy?” Scott asked.

“It was worth a shot.”

I put the car in neutral, thank God it was a manual transmission and, with the help of a groaning Edward and Jon, we pushed the car forward. There was a line of vehicles lining the road and we didn’t really have anywhere to go except into the woods with it. I shouted directions while I tried to crank the steering wheel to the right. The front of the car angled toward the line of trees. The others got the idea and we pushed faster and harder. As we approached the break I slid free of the wheel and the others gave one last push.

With a groan, the car hit the edge of the tree line and smashed through a six foot-high grove. It tilted down and kept going. I walked to the edge of the woods and stared down a sharp ravine that ended at a stream. The car bucked over branches and fallen chunks of woods. It hit the stream bed, tilted up in the air, and rolled over until the roof was in the water.

I stared for a moment longer until I was sure there were none of the things down there. I was about to turn and rejoin my comrades when a gunshot broke the silence. The sharp retort made me drop to my knees. My Beretta was half way tucked into the waist of my pants. I grabbed it hoping I had remembered to set the safety. It would be embarrassing if I accidentally shot myself in the ass cheek.

Dammit. I’d chastised Chris for making all of that noise, and then gone and pushed a car into a ravine and made enough noise to call every zombie in the area to us. I might as well have stood on top of the Stryker vehicle and shouted, “Come get us!”

A pair of the dead stood on the other side of the road, eyes intent on our military vehicle.

“Get moving!” I called and ran toward the Stryker.

Like a nightmare they came from the woods. At first there were only a few, then a few more. They came in their ugliness, this destitute horde of broken humanity. They shambled one by one then by the pair. Soon they poured out a half dozen at a time. Some hissed and others moaned as if they possessed some kind of intelligence.

The range was at least thirty feet so I didn’t waste bullets on hoping to make a shot. I ran as fast as I could, which wasn’t that quick considering the shape I was in. Breath wheezed in and out of my lungs as I struggled to breathe. My legs were on fire within seconds. Luckily it wasn’t far to the vehicle.

The rest were piling in with Chris the last in the back. He looked in my direction and actually reached for the cord as if to close me out of the Stryker. Ungrateful little shit.

Scott grabbed him and pushed him aside. I ran up the tiny ramp and nearly collapsed in the space. The guys pulled the door shut with a
clang
that reverberated inside the vehicle.

Edward slithered up the port with automatic in hand. The smell of fresh oil was thick in the enclosure. Someone had been cleaning the guns while we were out playing pitch the Caddy into the stream. I snatched up a rifle and aimed at the portal as it closed.

Scott slid through the little portal and crawled into the driver seat. He fired up the engine, put it in gear and, with a lurch, we were on our way. I made for the front of the vehicle, ducking so I didn’t bang my head on the heavy metal ceiling. I took my place in what would have been the command chair.

The view outside was bleak. A lot of the dead were on the scene. They came in their lurching masses, their moans and dead eyes fixed on us. If enough got in front of us we would become stuck. The Stryker was large but it wouldn’t take much to stop us in our tracks. Already damaged I didn’t want to test its limits.

Edward must have settled in up top. His machine gun hammered at the air, sounding like a rattling lawnmower from inside. I climbed the ladder, hands tight on the rungs as we lurched into motion.

Edward had a strap around his body that connected to a tie on the top of the vehicle. He looked down the sight and took aim with care. He didn’t panic. He fired a round, paused, adjusted, and fired again. He hit more than he missed.

Toward the front of the truck, the road was smooth sailing now that the car was out of the way. Scott used the clear road to move with purpose. Like Edward and his rifle, Scott took to the road in a controlled sort of panic. We yawed left and right a few times but he kept it steady and got around the mess of cars a moment later.

Then it was clear for at least a couple of football fields before we came to another mess.

This was not looking good. We needed to make it to Lisa’s base and drop the refugees off. At this rate it was going to take all day. I supposed we could hole up in the Stryker if things got rough. I didn’t trust the ghouls enough to try it. They had already proved to be much more clever than I would ever give them credit for.

“What was your count?” I asked Edward as we pulled away. He had slithered back down out of the turret so he could reload. I was happy he’d seen the sense in not using the flame thrower. If we got trapped and the trees were on fire, we would be stuck in an oven.

Edward’s long hair hung around his face. He shook it back and reached into a shirt pocket. Edward took out a rubber band and tied his hair back in a pony tail.

“I didn’t keep track. I never do,” he said. He didn’t look. He concentrated on sliding rounds into a magazine. I took the other magazine and helped him.

“No?”

“Nah, what’s the point? It’s not like anyone is paying me to do it. I kept score for a while but this crazy girl named Julie thought it would be fun to constantly one up me. All the men for that matter.”

“Sounds like a keeper.”

“She was until they got to her. I was in the woods when I watched three of them hold her down and force some disgusting hunk of rotted flesh down her throat. She screamed for a long time after they let her up.”

“Christ.” I sighed.

“He wasn’t there that day. Anyway. I waited until it was almost dark and, when she started to show signs, I shot her in the head. She fell over without a sound but I wonder if there was a smile on her lips. Isn’t that funny? A dead girl smiling?”

“I don’t think it’s funny at all.” I didn’t meet his eyes. My thoughts were on my own ghosts. “How did you get away?”

“Oh. I took one down and sort of faded into the woods. I had a lot better camouflage then. We were organized, had roles and jobs. It was easier then, but now everything is just a fucking mess.”

His hand tightened on the magazine. He slid it into the gun and racked a round in. Then he slithered up the portal. I motioned and he moved on top so I could join him.

We lay down and eyed the title army of the dead. A desiccated man came at us. He was fast mover with a torn up hat. Might have been something suited for a cowboy at one time. Now it was just a scrap that wasn’t fit to piss in.

I lay the gun along the back of the truck and took aim. There was a short sight on the rifle designed for hunting game. The dead man’s head came into view. I put the crosshair right on the zombie’s forehead but before I could shoot, Jon fired and took the thing in the throat. It fell back legs scrambling at the ground. As it gave up its second life, one leg kept kicking at the road propelling the big guy around in a half circle. His motor skills gave up before he could come all the way around to face us.

“Nice shot.”

“I was aiming for his chest. I thought his head would be too much of a small target. But I’ll take it,” Edward replied.

“How long were you in the camp?” I asked.

“The concentration camp? That’s what we called it. It was like some crazy experiment the Nazi’s might’ve tried. These ghouls are smart. They know how to prey on horror. They know how to terrify and how to make you do what they want you to do. Some of the stronger ones even influenced people to do things they didn’t want to do. They tried it on me and I thought I felt a tingling, like a fly was loose in my brain, but I stopped it with a thought. I made them go away. One dude even grabbed his head like he was hurt. I think their tricks don’t work on some of us.”

“That’s good news. I wonder what makes you different.”

“Not sure. I think you’re different, too. It’s like you have immunity to their tricks. Most folks would have gone to them. They would have seen the first sign of zombies coming at them and would have started to go nuts. It’s bad in a house when one of your friends starts shooting at anything that moves. Every shadow and flicker becomes an enemy. I saw one guy shoot out a lamp and then turn the gun on himself. I pushed it away but he still managed to take of part of his ear and lose his hearing on that side for good.”

Edward gave me a lot to think about.

Back in the command seat I settled in for the haul. We had to stop fifteen minutes later for yet another car pile up.

T
he new world
had showed me a lot of death. I thought I had seen it in all its forms. Before this, I was a soldier. I fought where they sent me. I shot at people and, on more than one occasion, I killed. Some of the guys in my squad liked it. They liked saying they had a kill. They kept count and some even put marks on the stock of their weapons.

I didn’t like it, and in some ways I had distanced myself from the feeling by because the things I shot were already dead. Even the ghouls, with their barely functioning systems, were fodder. I could count those in my most welcome daydream and consider each death a blessing.

But nothing in the world had prepared me for this.

The woods opened up at last and we were met with the familiar sight of a highway junction. Another five or ten minutes and we’d be well outside of Vesper Lake and near the location of Lisa’s caravan. I chewed on my fingernails while I considered what I’d find. I hated to think what I would do if I came across her corpse. Or worse. What if she’d become a ghoul? The best I could do for her was to shoot her but would that be what she wanted? It wasn’t my place to decide her fate.

There was no way we could climb it’s peak to the top and get on a road littered with the husks of cars and trucks. We would have to pick our way along the side of the wide road and hope we didn’t run out of places to run along the side of. The once well kept freeway was anything but. Shrubs grew along the side and, in another year, they would take over the road.

Cars had been abandoned. Most were empty but more than one held a figure that moved. I guess the dead were too stupid to figure out how to use a door handle. I didn’t care to get close enough to check on them either. If a ghoul came along, maybe they could help out.

A set of railroad tracks ran parallel to the road for a while before fading over the horizon and into a copse of woods.

A few cars lay along the side of the track. Overturned railway cars had spilled their cargo. We edged along the side of the road as much as we could but there wasn’t a lot of room between the metal guide rails.

Chatter was brief in the back of the vehicle. The survivors didn’t want to talk much. At times they seemed amazed they were alive at all. Other times they were in shock.

Another car pushed to the side of the road blocked us. I got on top of the vehicle, head sticking out so I could eyeball the way ahead. I called into the hatch so Scott knew what to anticipate ahead. I did my best, but we still ran into numerous abandoned cars and trucks. Some looked like roadblocks from the way they covered our escape route, like someone had foreseen our path and planned the best way to kill us.

As crazy as the green-eyed ghouls were, I was pretty sure they weren’t prescient, but after what Edward had told me now I wasn’t so sure.

Scott and I got out of the vehicle to inspect the pile of shit. Jon and Janet covered us and Chris, his eyes darting around, stood around with his hands in his pockets.

Scott and I set to work on a burned out wrecker, the ball and hook of which connected, ironically, to another car blocking our path. We had to dig around until we found a hacksaw. No bolt cutters to be seen. I went at the chain for a few minutes with each hand, then Scott took over while I took the watch.

Machine gun pointed everywhere at once, I listened to the wind and the creaking of the trees all around us. The smell was one of decay, rot, ruin. Burned out husks filtered the smell of charcoal. Every time I took a whiff I thought of how much I would give for a cookout. Oh God, hamburgers on the grill broiled to bloody center perfection.

The next smell that hit me was a different kind of rot. A foul smell that reeked very lightly of old fish. Like someone had left a hunk of cod out in the sun.

The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention. A chill swept down my spine even though the day was hot and getting hotter by the moment. It was so bright that it would be impossible to make out any glowing eyes. But the smell was enough. I knew they were out there. At the last stop I thought I saw movement in the distance, in the woods that lined the freeway. I thought I saw something large but later convinced myself it was just a group of deer.

Now I wasn’t so sure. Could the dead be hunting us? Could the ghouls have gotten wind of our location and been looking for revenge?

We were in no condition to make a stand if they surrounded us. We would have to use what little fuel the flamethrower had to make our escape and hope we didn’t set the woods around us on fire, creating a pressure cooker. If one or two of us rode on top they could provide fire for anything that got in front of us. If too many piled up we might never make it though. The Stryker was in bad enough shape without it having to withstand a full assault.

The chain came loose and the car dropped the two feet to the ground so we set to pushing it off the road. The wrecker was next and that called for all hands. Even with it in neutral it took us precious minutes to get the beast out of the way.

Now that the road was clear for a few feet, I sent a few of the refugees to repeat the process while Scott and I conferred.

“We need to sweep this area. I can’t hear them but I swear to fucking God I can sense them out there,” I said.

Scott nodded. “I hear ya, man. It’s like I got a bullseye on the back of my neck. Making me itch.”

“Keep an eye on Chris. He’s been acting weird around me.”

“I think I know why. Didn’t want to say anything. Homeboy can’t take it personal.”

“What?” I asked Scott.

“Pretty sure one of those ghouls back at the camp was his dad.”

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered.

We cleared another pair of cars and piled into the vehicle once more. Bringing it up to speed wasn’t so easy because we had a lot of debris on the road to contend with. I took the wheel so Scott could take a break and act as my lookout.

Something bounced off the top of the Stryker. Scott and I looked up at the same time.

Something else hit the side.

“Drive on. Ignore it,” Scott advised.

I agreed and kept my foot on the gas.

We came around a bend in the road and found a pile of bodies. Not just a few, but at least a dozen. They’d been strung out in a row and Scott had to slow down. Some of the corpses appeared to have been burned while others simply bore bloody wounds. Limbs had been placed around the mound and I couldn’t help but gag at the atrocity.

I slowed again but this time came to a halt. We could drive over it but what in the hell could have possessed someone to create such a thing.

Something else bounced off the roof. I tensed, expecting an attack, or worse, an explosion. We’d probably be safe inside if we buttoned up but the weird flame thrower that had been constructed on top made that nearly impossible.

They came out of the trees. Dozens of the dead and, around them, were many green-eyed ghouls. They moved to surround the vehicle. Scott put it in gear and we lurched forward, nosing through the mass. More things hit the Stryker as we approached the pile of bodies. Maybe my mind was playing tricks on me but I thought for sure one of the faces in the mass belonged to Haley.

Then one of the bodies rose up and approached us. The ghoul was covered in gore but his eyes shone brightly. I accelerated and struck him and he fell away. The Stryker rolled over the bodies, crested the little hill, and we were over it. Then something exploded and the rear of the big vehicle lifted into the air. I was tossed forward and barely managed to get my hand up in time to keep from smacking into the front dash. Scott sat back in his seat, hard, and cursed. Screams rose from our passengers as we shuddered to a halt. I gunned the engine anyway and we managed to roll forward a few dozen yards before the smell of smoke told me we needed to assess. I didn’t want to but we needed to clear this area and quickly. Christ!

The goddamn ghouls had set a trap for us.

Something else exploded behind us but I could tell it hadn’t struck us. I looked into the cramped confines of the vehicle and found scared faces. A few bore wounds from being thrown around. Chris glared at me as a trickle of blood rolled down his forehead, nose, and then caressed his upper lip.

“Stay calm. We’re still mobile. I’m going to get us as far away as possible,” I yelled over the cries.

“They’re coming for us!” One of the refugees shouted.

“We’re all dead,” another screamed.

The road had another bend and flames rose into the air, casting the street in eerie shadows. Smoke carried on the wind and found us. I gagged and wished this damn vehicle was battle ready.

I hit the gas again and came around the bend only to find the source of the fire.

Several cars were on fire and they created a perfect blockade. The sides of the road were narrow and butted up against low walls of rock. This passageway had been cut into the side of a large hill decades ago, and now it was a trap.

I wanted to go for it, but since the explosion the vehicle had started to sheer to the left. We’d probably lost a wheel or two back there.

More objects hit the top as I came to a decision.

“Everyone hold the fuck on,” I said.

“If you get us stuck we’ll probably join that barbecue,” Scott observed.

“Then pray we don’t get stuck,” I muttered and punched the pedal all the way to the floor.

The Stryker didn’t exactly shoot forward, but it found purchase and we barreled along the street. I fought the steering handle the whole time as the big military vehicle tried to pull us to the left. We had a good twenty or thirty feet but I feared it wouldn’t be enough to get our momentum up high enough.

I glanced over my shoulder and found everyone clutching at whatever they could. Fear rode their faces as eyes met mine.

We hit the first car and it bounced away. The second car was a lot bigger, an older Buick if I had to make my guess, and like our ride, it was built like a tank. The Stryker, and what remained of its eight wheels, fought for purchase as our already reduced momentum pushed it to the side. Then we were through.

I gasped as the next obstacle came into view.

The flames and smoke had done a good job of hiding it. The flatbed of an eighteen-wheeler, sans tractor and without a load lay in front of us. I slammed on the brakes but it was too late.