Dead, but Not for Long (26 page)

Monkey crawled toward the fence, dragging his busted
leg behind him. As the shooting continued, it seemed to attract more attention,
as the dead were now beginning to surround the bikers on the other side of the
fence, forcing the shooters on the ground to concentrate on defending themselves.

As Monkey came within feet of the fence, the horde caught up with him. A look of horror
crossed his face as the dead began to overwhelm him, pulling him back as he
tried to claw his way forward. The horror turned to pain as they began to sink
their teeth into his flesh.

Snake shook the fence and yelled, hoping to draw the zombies away from his friend, but it was
too late. They had already begun to tear into his body. His friend’s screams
reverberated in his ears and he knew what he had to do. Lowering his pistol to
Monkey’s forehead, he put his finger on the trigger and began to squeeze.

Snake had pulled the trigger countless times since the crisis had begun and, for the most part,
the targets had been mindless ghouls. He had also performed two mercy killings,
but they had been strangers, mangled to the point where death had been a
welcome release. This was different. Monkey was like a son to him. Snake had
been with him through the drugs and alcohol. He had watched as a life of chaos
had begun to have meaning again. He had watched as Monkey had begun to help
others overcome the same demons that he had slain. Now, Snake’s hand trembled
as he tried in vain to pull the trigger. Monkey screamed as he awaited the
fatal blow and the men grew anxious as the undead horde around them began to
close in. Snake had to end his friend’s suffering, but his finger wouldn’t move.

A shot rang out and Monkey’s head jerked to the
side then followed his body to the ground where he lay, motionless. Snake
looked up to see Wolf slowly lowering his gun. Snake nodded his head in a
gesture of doleful gratitude and hurried back to the truck, firing through the
crowd of undead that was increasing by the minute. Within seconds, he and the
rest were safely back at the truck.

~*~

The incident with Monkey had happened so fast that
Snake had barely had time to think. Driving back to the hospital, he had
nothing but time. The group had decided earlier that if any of them got bitten,
they were no longer who they used to be. They were dead, and the newly born
creature inside them must be destroyed. Still, it didn’t make it any easier on
Snake. He’d known Monkey for years and had always warned him that someday his
impulsiveness would be the end of him. Doune remained silent and Snake was glad about that.

As they drove back to the hospital in silence, Doune
again studied the infected that they passed, observing everything in an effort
to learn more about them. They were clumsy and slow and while they were
probably almost as strong as they had been in life, their biggest advantage
seemed to be their large numbers. Unless a person was caught off guard, one or
two of them would be little more than an annoyance.

Nick glanced over when Snake straightened in his seat, squinting at something running ahead of them.

“They’re moving pretty fast for dead guys,” the
biker said, opening the window to call up to the men on top of the truck. “Boys,
I think we might have some survivors up ahead and it looks like they’re not alone.”

He gunned the engine to bring them closer to the
small group of people that were running toward the road. The man at the front
was clearing a path with a baseball bat, but when he spotted the truck he began
waving frantically. He was trailed by a couple of small children and a woman
who was carrying a bundle in her arms.

The man helped his family around some of the cars
that had been pushed off the road then he urged them toward the truck as he
turned to take a swing at the closest of the following horde. He obviously knew
how to use the baseball bat, dropping the creature with a single blow to the
head. He took out a second one and then a third before hurrying after his family once more.

When the woman and children reached the truck, a
couple of the bikers jumped down to help them. They knew it would be difficult
to get the family onto the roof, so one of them tried to open the roll-up door
at the back of the truck. The man still lagged behind, working crowd control with his baseball bat.

“Come on, hurry up, mate,” Wombat said. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“It’s stuck,” replied Fish, whose real name was
Gilbert, though he went by Gil. Snake had immediately known what nickname to
give him. “I can’t budge it.”

“That equipment must have shifted inside,” Wombat said, sheathing his machete.

Both of the bikers worked together while Wolf, who
was still on top of the truck, picked off the closer zombies, but there were many more coming.

“What’s the hold up?” Wolf yelled to the others, not
able to see them. He turned and fired off three quick shots, dropping one ghoul with each bullet.

“Lady, get in the cab and we’ll put the kids and
your husband on the top of the truck,” Fish said.

“No,” she said. “I don’t want the children up there
unless I’m with them.”

“Fine, then we’ll put you all up there,” he said.

“Hand up the kids,” someone said, leaning over to
reach an arm down. They got the two children up quickly but when Wombat tried
to take the baby from the mother, she pulled away.

“No!” she said, eyes wild.

“All right, lady, nobody’s going to hurt your kid,”
the Australian biker said. “But if we don’t get you up there fast, you’re both
going to die!”

“Ginny, do what they say!” the husband said,
glancing at the truck long enough to see what was going on. He turned away,
quickly crushing another head as the hordes continued to move in closer.

“Can you pull the truck forward, Boss?” Wombat
yelled to Snake as he ran toward the front. “I think that equipment is pressing
back against the door, since we’re on an incline. Can you get her pointed downhill?”

“Can do,” Snake replied, shifting the truck back
into gear. “Hang on boys.”

Doune gritted his teeth, wondering if any of his
equipment had broken in the back. They didn’t need to be piling a bunch of
people on top of it, either.

Wombat heard a hiss behind him and swung around
quickly, machete ready for action. He only hesitated long enough to make sure
it was one of the undead before easily burying his weapon into the rotting
creature’s head. Once the body dropped to the ground, truly dead, Wombat had to
step on it to pry the machete back out and then there were more of them.
Swinging hard at the next one, he was able to take its head with a single blow,
which always made him feel warm and fuzzy inside. The head was still alive and
snapping at him as it hit the ground and bounced. He took aim and sent it
flying with a perfect kick, much to the amusement of Wolf.

“Quit playing around down there,” the older biker said from the roof with a grin.

“Sorry,” Wombat said sheepishly, jabbing his machete through the eye of another one.
“I haven’t played football since high school and I kind of miss it.”

“Soccer,” said Wolf. “I keep telling you, that ain’t football.”

Wombat just laughed, turning to face yet another of the ghouls.

“You’ll have to climb up,” Fish told the woman. “This door ain’t opening.”

“Get up there, Ginny,” her husband said, hurrying over.
“I’ll hand the baby up.”

She started to protest, but the look in his eyes
caused her to comply. They hurried to the front of the truck where she was able
to climb onto the hood before taking the baby from her husband.

“Brian, behind you,” she yelled.

Her husband turned and clubbed a dead woman over the
head, watching her slump to the ground as another replaced her.

“Time to go,” Wombat yelled, hurrying over to join
them. He turned and split another head open, pulling his machete free with some
effort. “Too many of them.”

Brian climbed up onto the roof easily with Fish and
the other two bikers following. Wombat finally pulled his pistol and began to
pick off the closest ones. Those on the roof were doing the same but the numbers were growing.

“Wombat!” Wolf yelled. “Get your butt up here.”

“Yeah, I’d like to do that, really,” he yelled up,
pausing to put a bullet into the eye socket of what had once been a boy scout. “Just
trying to figure out how to do it without getting pulled right back down.”

The only way he could keep the growing crowd back was to continue shooting them.
He knew that if he turned to climb onto the truck, they’d grab him.

Wolf turned to the others.

“Guys, we need to lay down some heavy fire to give
him a few seconds to get up here. Everybody down to this end.”

Positions were shifted with the family going toward
the back of the truck while the bikers all moved to the front.

Wolf yelled, “You get ready to move the second you have a chance.”

“Sure thing,” Wombat said, firing off another shot. The
snipers were still picking off the closer ones but the circle was closing in.
The biker was growing tired but he dared not slow down in his efforts.
He aimed the pistol at an approaching ghoul but when he pulled the trigger, all he heard was a click.
He switched to his machete to finish the job.
With the extra help on the front of the truck, a small area was soon cleared and Wolf
thought that Wombat had a chance of making it up; a slim chance.

“Now,” he yelled down to the other biker. “Get up here!”

There were several of the undead still grabbing for the biker, but the shooters on top of the truck
were dropping them before they had the chance to reach Wombat.
The biker whirled around and launched himself onto the hood of the truck.
He moved fast but not fast enough. One of them grabbed his ankle and pulled his leg out from under him.
As he was falling onto the hood, Wombat twisted his body and slashed down hard, severing the hand at the wrist.
He kicked it away before scooting back against the windshield and finally getting to his feet again.
Before making his way up to the roof, he grinned at Doune and Snake through the windshield.

“Well, that was fun,” he said, collapsing onto the roof.

One of the others pounded his fist on the top of the cab to let Snake they were ready to go.

“Hold on to the chains,” Wolf told the newcomers. Chains
had been bolted down the length of the roof on both sides. “The ride might get
a little rough.”

Brian grabbed the two kids and had them lay down
flat. He held them with one arm and the chain with the other.

“This is going to be tricky,” Snake said, as they
moved down the street. Every time he hit one of the dead, there was a loud thump
that made him wonder what kind of damage was being done to the truck.

Nick, on the other hand, was more concerned about
his equipment in the back. Eventually they managed to leave the horde of undead
behind, but Snake knew that the creatures would end up near the hospital
eventually, unless something else caught their attention along the way.

The road was clear of obstacles, aside from a few
more infected that wandered into their path, which Snake quickly dispatched with his bumper.

Nick continued to look around at the wounded city.
It was odd seeing Lansing so quiet, so devoid of life. He had always enjoyed
driving in to the hospital early, before the morning rush began, but even then
there had always been at least a few other cars on the road. Up ahead, the partial
wall around the hospital could be seen and the gap where the gate would
eventually go seemed to be clear. Snake drove through it then turned around to back
up to a loading dock as several of his men approached the truck.

One of the bikers said. “We’ve been dropping a lot
of bodies trying to keep this parking lot clear for you.”

The man looked at the rest of the crew on top of the
truck. “Where’s Monkey?”

Snake shook his head and jumped from the cab. “Let’s
hurry boys. We’re going to have more company soon.”

~*~

Doune thanked them and then hurried inside with a
few of his most fragile instruments. He got the doors opened to the lab and
propped them that way so that the rest of the equipment could be brought in.

“Is this lab going to be big enough for everything?”
Lindsey asked Dr. Doune, as she looked around the room with some doubt.

“I doubt it. It’s already a little tight in here as
it is but I want to be close to the quarantine room and there isn’t anything
bigger available nearby.”

He glanced back toward the ER and he saw that the
rescued family had come in along with the bikers.

“We picked up some survivors,” Doune told Lindsey. “Could
you see about getting them into quarantine?”

“Sure,” Lindsey said, walking over to meet the
family. She introduced herself and asked if anybody had been bitten and was
relieved when they assured her that they had not. She explained that they would
have to be in quarantine for a while, just to be safe, but they could rest or
watch DVDs or have something to eat. The mother seemed distracted but that was
understandable after what they’d been through.

Brian told Lindsey that they’d seen the lights from
the hospital a couple of days earlier and had been desperately trying to get there ever since.

“Our building was completely overrun,” he explained.
“I had to lower my family down several stories by rope, one at a time. It was
terrifying for all of us and that was just the beginning of the nightmare. I
don’t think that any of us except the baby have slept at all in the last two days.”

A couple of the teenagers who were helping in the
kitchen brought some food over and the family began to dig in, except for the mother.

“I can hold the baby while you eat,” Lindsey
offered, but the mother shook her head and seemed to clutch the child tighter.

A bad feeling began to creep over Lindsey. Something wasn’t right.