DEAD: Reborn (17 page)

While they did their part, Kevin went to work on the next part of his mission. The children had almost made this too easy. He was still trying to figure out a plan when Sean had asked him if dynamite would come in handy.
At first, Kevin thought that he was joking.

“That and maybe a tank…a few fighter jets,” Kevin had quipped.

“Well I can’t really help with those others, but we got a bunch of real dynamite. Just let me know if you need it.”

“Wait…you’re being serious?”

“Sure. There is a quarry not far from here. Fish brought it back one day. He only told a few of us where it was hidden. He was afraid that some of the little ones might get stupid.”

Kevin had asked Sean to show him where it was stored. When he looked, he had
almost felt his heart come through his chest. One of the boxes had been opened already. Inside were the telltale crystals that indicated that the dynamite was weeping its nitroglycerine. He almost decided to completely forgo the second box, but his curiosity got the better of him. Fortunately, that box was pristine.

He had to give this kid Fish some credit. Not only had he demonstrated the sense to make sure that few knew of this stuff, but he also was smart enough to grab blasting caps and fuses as well. Kevin had created eight three-stick bundles. He gave two to Sean, two to Catie, and kept two for himself. The other two bundles were back with Heather.

Kevin placed the first bundle and pushed it up to the barricade with a stick. He continued to marvel at the ignorance or arrogance—he had to assume it was a mix of both—that this little band of ne’er-do-wells showed when it came to security. Here he was, just a few feet away from their wall, and he had not heard a peep from within.

It took almost twenty minutes, but eventually everything was in place. He glanced at the watch on his wrist. It read five o’clock. In exactly twenty minutes, he would light the fuse. If everybody else was having as easy of a time as he and his group seemed to be having, this problem would be over in no time.

He uttered a silent prayer to whatever mystical being might be listening.
Just once, could we have something go according to plan? Please?

The sweeping second hand appeared to slow down as the time drew near to light the fuse. He looked at the kids crouched beside him and was just a bit surprised at how calm they all looked. They could be waiting for a school bus for all the em
otion that they showed.

A scream.

It was just one, but it was long, loud, and obviously in a lot of pain. And it was coming from just the other side of the barricade. It was not one of his people, of that he felt fairly confident.

It was still ten minutes before things were scheduled to begin. Tha
t would mean that, if he had this timed properly, Aleah was headed this way right now. She probably heard the scream considering how quiet the world was nowadays, but there was no guarantee.

Another scream, this one weaker and followed by shouts and cries.

That’s what I get for praying. God probably hates hypocrites
, Kevin thought. The children were showing emotion now. One of the boys was even starting to edge back and away. Kevin snagged his arm and shook his head. The boy tried to pull away, but then Deanna grabbed the boy’s other arm and gave one very curt shake of her head.

Kevin risked rising up just enough to peek over the veget
ation. Out on the road, nothing was moving. Across the way would be the general direction that Aleah should be coming from at any moment. Catie finding that one large herd was a stroke of luck. That had helped Kevin finalize his plans.

She had estima
ted their size to be in the range of almost ten thousand. When she was out on her mission to scout the camp of their target, she’d seen a dark smudge on the horizon to the south. She’d gone to see if it was a potential threat to their location and been surprised to discover that the enormous pack of zombies had simply reached a spot in the middle of a field and stopped.

Using binoculars, she had taken a closer look to see i
f she could discover the cause. It was as simple as the fact that the head of the heard had entered a three sided depression. The sides were too steep to climb and, at some point, the herd had just stopped.

They sort of mushroomed out from the single point of entry, but those in the rear showed no desire to just roam away on a tangent. Thus, Kevin had reasoned, they would simply stay put until they were stimulated to change. They were far enough away from the encampment that the noise was not at a level that could be picked up by the zombies—that was going off of Ke
vin’s assumption that sound played at least some part in their process.

It had all come together too easily. However, this time, Ke
vin was embracing things. Okay, this was not the movies, but why can’t real life play out as planned every once in a while? This time, he was going with what he considered to be a very straightforward and simple plan. Yet, here it was, just minutes away, and there was definitely something wrong happening inside.

The noise from beyond the barricade was escalating. It act
ually sounded like a pretty major fight was going on. There were yells and curses…and a fair amount of anguished screams and cries. He was beginning to worry. Sure, part of his plan involved noisemakers, but what he did not want is for him or any of the other groups to get trapped between the hoard that should be coming into view any moment now and the walls of this camp.

His final instructions had been very explicit: Do not vary from the plan. Stick to the schedule.

A loud ‘whump’ was quickly followed by a teeth-jarring ground-shaker of an explosion. Kevin looked at Deanna and gave a slight nod. She tapped the two boys and retreated into the growth. For some reason, he trusted this girl to get them back to the rally point safe and sound.

Popping up again, he inched back until he could see up into the closest tower. At first he thought that it was not manned, but a flash of a shadow finally revealed that there was at least one person up there. It was also obvious that they were not looking out. All of the action was inside the barricade at the moment. Part of him wanted to cheer. Was this a stroke of fortune that would assure that his plan was a success?

Looking back, he saw the first of the zombies cresting the small ridge. That meant that Aleah had done her part. She was supposed to get that herd to follow, and it looked like she had been successful. Now he just needed to do his part.

Kevin glanced at the watch. Less than a minute. And it was the slowest minute in his life. He did not wait one second longer and it seemed that the other groups were just as anxious. Kevin lit the fuses
and moved away. Less than ten seconds later—the fastest in his life—the airhorns started to blare as their timers went off. The sounds of sirens and bells came in a tsunami of sound that drowned out anything that might be happening inside the barricade. Less than twenty seconds later, the explosions overwhelmed everything.

Kevin could not resist popping up to take another look. At first he was heartbroken. One of the locations where he had planted a bundle of dynamite was smoking, but he could not see any sort of breech, but the second location was a different story. A cavernous gash that looked to be hiding a fire-breathing dra
gon would offer plenty of access to the approaching hoard. Kevin swiveled his head and was thrilled to see the zombies doing just as he hoped; almost as a single organism, the teeming mass of undead pivoted and homed in on the walled camp.

Now that the explosi
ons had subsided, the sounds of the noisemakers could be heard once again. There would be five more sets along each wall that would go off at different times. This would ensure that zombies would move for each side that had been breached. Also, in the unlikely event that anybody from within came out or somehow managed to disable one set of noisemakers, there would eventually be another.

Ducking down again, Kevin almost stepped on the crawler that was making its way through the overgrown field that was providing such excellent cover for his strike force. Stepping over it, Kevin moved and waited to see if it would turn for him. When it did, he took the time to end it for good. He had hoped that the constant noise would draw it to the target, but apparently the close proximity of a potential meal was too great for a zombie to resist.

As Kevin neared the road, he heard the first of ‘the screams’ that indicated the zombies were inside the barricade. It did not matter how big and bad you thought you were, being torn apart and eaten alive made even the biggest badass scream and shriek in a register that was almost painful to the human ear.

As he reached the road, Aleah popped up from the ditch on the far side. She was sweaty and dirty, but at the moment, she was the best and most beautiful thing that he had ever seen. He suddenly realized how perilous her part had been. To run through unknown terrain and get the attention of a herd of zo
mbies that numbered close to ten thousand if you believed Catie’s estimate—and having seen for himself, he had no reason to doubt her numbers—and then lead them on a chase where she needed to stay within their field of vision until they were close enough…and then escape and find a place to hide. What had he been thinking when he chose
her
for that part of the mission?

“Where are the rest of the kids?” Aleah asked with genuine concern.

“Huh?” At first Kevin did not know what she could be talking about, then he realized that they were supposed to be with him. “When whatever went off inside that place began, they were getting scared. I had Deanna hustle them back to the rally point. She has a good head on her shoulders. I have no doubts that she will get them there okay.”

“But I thought the groups were supposed to stick toget
her…‘no matter what’ I believe was the phrase that you used on numerous occasions.”

Kevin gave her a shrug and started up the road to the old brown farm house that had been chosen as their rally point. All teams were supposed to make for that once they had done their job.

Kevin arrived to discover Deanna and the two boys sitting on a rusted out tractor that poked from the tall grass. Once he got close, he said in a very stern voice, “I realize that guns are becoming less frequent these days as what was once thought to be an infinite supply of bullets is running out, but anybody with a scoped rifle could have picked you off from a couple hundred yards. And the thing is, you would not even hear the shot. From that distance, the bullet would hit you before the sound made it to your ears.”

All of the kids paled; even Deanna. Aleah shot him a nasty look, but he chose to pretend that he didn’t see it. These kids needed to learn. It was better by far if it came from a few words out of his mouth versus some of the alternatives.

Within a few minutes, Catie and Sean both arrived with their respective groups in tow. Catie seemed to be taking in everything at once and immediately turned up the heat on Kevin’s level of alertness. Sean, in contrast, was smiling like a kid who just came down on Christmas morning and discovered every single thing he wanted was under the tree.

Deciding that he didn’t want to rile everybody else up, he waved Catie over to the side while the children all clustered around Sean talking about how “amazing” and “awesome” and a multitude of other adjectives to describe their reaction to this operation were bandied about.

“What’s up?” Kevin whispered.

“Did you hear all that stuff going down just before we hit them? Do you think they had some other prisoners in there?” Catie asked.

“I didn’t…until just now. But seriously, groups like that are usually run by a bunch of knuckleheads. How they have even survived this long is one of life’s unexplained mysteries.”

“N
o, something was wrong in there. I heard bits of some of the stuff being said, I couldn’t make sense of it, but there was something going on.”

“It doesn’t really matter now, does it? We did what we came to do, and it can’t be undone. We need to get back to the others. Hanging around here with zombies running out of munchies is not the best choice.”

Kevin turned back to the others and got everybody moving. Catie stayed put for a moment, her eyes locked on the rising plumes of smoke from the fairgrounds. She could not shake the feeling that there was something there that they missed.

“Catie, let’s go!” Kevin hissed.

The group headed back to the cemetery where Heather and the other children were waiting. Catie wasn’t the only one who kept looking over their shoulder. Kevin had heard things beyond that barricade as well. He had dismissed it then as just being hyper-aware from the rush of adrenaline that had flooded his system. But when Catie had said something, it had planted a seed of doubt.

***

“So we leave in the morning,” Kevin announced.

All of the children were gathered around, most just sitting on the ground. Some were paying attention, but most of them did not look like they could care less if he were to just up and go right this minute.

“Any of you that want to come will be welcome, but I am not going to lie…the trip will be long and hard. And once we arrive, there will be a lot of work to do.”

Kevin looked around to see if there might be any questions. When it was clear that was not to be the case, Kevin
shrugged and walked away leaving Heather, Catie and Aleah behind. He had to take care of a few things.