Forget The Zombies (Book 3): Forget America (13 page)

“Okay, I guess I need to ask,” I said, “Can you walk?”

“If I really had to,” he replied, “Yes. Well, maybe. The shot hit me in the spine and I’m having a little trouble feeling my legs right now.”

“I’m taking that means that you can’t.”

He didn’t say anything as he fought to get back to a sitting position. That was answer enough. I surveyed the area and the gas had nearly completely dissipated leaving only the darkness and the fog to cover us from the walking dead. I made out forms moving in and out of the darkness

“The problem is that the more we shoot, the more attention we get from the zombies,” Chuck said, breathing hard and pointing off into the dark.

He was more than right. Coming out of the dark in multiple directions were loads of zombies, threatening to cut off any escape path and overrun us.

My quick assessment of the situation was that I had two nearly immobile people with me and a small horde of zombies coming at us, hungry and eager to order off our menu. In other words, we were screwed unless the cavalry arrived from compound. I might be able to make a run for it, but they couldn’t.

“How much ammo do you have?” I asked.

“Enough hold them off for a few minutes at best.”

“Throw me a clip or two,” I asked.

He reached into his many pocketed vest, retrieved two clips and tossed them my way. I let Rosalita back down and retrieved them, getting ready for the onslaught.

“You know, you really should run for it,” Chuck said. “I can hold them off.”

“You can barely sit-up.”

“Well, I have these,” he held up two grenades.

“And can you throw those from a sitting position far enough away that none of don’t get a faceful of shrapnel?”

He contemplated this question for a few seconds and then said, “A last resort option,” and stowed them back onto his vest.

By then two zombies had made it to within fifteen of us. I started to target them when Chuck swiveled, aim, and fired. Blossoms of red burst from the two zombie’s foreheads and they toppled over backwards. Chuck held his sitting position this time.

“Not only a badass ninja, but a sharpshooter, too,” I said to Chuck.

“Keep it up and I’m liable to get over confident,” he said.

A wet thud sounded behind me and Rosalita gasped. I whirled around to find a zombie bearing down on the two of us. It was a teenage boy who had been badly mauled by something. His face looked like ground beef, but the unmistakable gleam of his teeth caught the moonlight above. The teeth clacked together like those toy teeth you used to be able to get as gag gifts. The gag gift teeth were funny, but these were frightening.

I took aim and pulled the trigger once. My bullet grazed down the side of the thing’s head, knocking it off balance and sent it tumbling over. It took a couple seconds to recover and came back at us looking a little more wobbly.

“I guess the U.S. Marshall service doesn’t do much target practice,” Chuck said.

“Hey, you have a rifle and I have a handgun,” I said. “Cut me some slack.”

I re-targeted the zombie, aimed for the forehead and got a winner this time as my shot took off the top of the zombie’s head. Two down and countless others to go.

“How many zombies were in that pit?” I asked.

“A hundred to a hundred and fifty, I think,” Chuck said. “I didn’t stop to count them.”

“How did you get them out?” I asked scanning the surroundings for any movement.

“I cut through the fence surrounding the pit, got some large planks of wood, and made ramp for the to walk-up and out.”

“That sounds tricky,” I said.

“It was. I was hoping to herd them into the compound and create a distraction and then do what I could to rescue you all, but it took longer than I thought and there you all were, coming across the field.”

“The best laid plans of mice and men,” I said almost under my breath.

“Steinbeck, right?” Chuck said.

“A well read man. You never cease to surprise me,” I replied.

He jerked to his left and cracked off three shots. He managed to remain in an upright position, but looked shaky doing it. I looked into the mist and saw two zombies go down for the count.

I’m a decent shot, but I could never have been that accurate from a sitting position.

A gunshot sounded off to our left and something whizzed by my head. I spun in time to see the muzzle flash of another shot. A clump of grass exploded into the air just two feet off to my right.

“Get down,” I yelled and threw myself to the ground. The reality was that of the three of us, I was the only one standing. I sighed. As if the zombies weren’t enough, there was still one of Jeb’s crazies out there shooting at us.

I targeted the place where I had seen the muzzle flash, but saw only blackness there. I stared intently into the darkness that I began to see phantom shapes forming and then dissolving before my eyes. I doubted any of them were real, but couldn’t take a chance as I aimed at each one.

“You see anything?” I asked Chuck.

I waited for an answer, but he was silent.

“Chuck?” I hissed out, but again he didn’t say anything.

Another shot whizzed by me and Rosalita let out a short scream.

“Rosalita, you okay?” I asked.

“Si, Grant,” she whispered. “That one was very close.”

“I’m going over to check on Chuck. Stay down.” I crawled across the wet grass, keeping my body as tight to the ground as I could. When I made it to him, he was on his back. I could hear him breathing, but his breaths came in hitches.

“Chuck, you okay?” I whispered. It was so dark, I could barely see any details. I reached out and shook him and he moaned. I didn’t know if that was a good sign, so I felt around on him looking to see if he had been hit or not. I felt no holes or blood, but it was difficult with all the hardware he was carrying. Since he wasn’t using it, I decided to take his rifle since my handgun wasn’t too great at shooting at a distance. I felt around some more and pulled off something that felt like binoculars. In the dim light, I saw that they were night vision goggles.

I quickly put them on and flicked the on button. The world went from black to varying shades of green, running a spectrum from a white-hot lime green down to a green so dark it could only be found in the darkest of caves. Initially, it was quite disorienting, but I had worn them before and quickly acclimated as I scanned the horizon, moving from right to left.

What I saw made me want to take the goggles off. Zombies shambled this way and that. One very large male zombies stood still as if he were sniffing the air for some sort of scent. I didn’t know how much smell played into them finding fresh meat and didn’t want to find out at that point in time. His head rotated on his shoulders like dog waiting for the racoon that got away to suddenly show up again.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have spent so much time on the zombie. A muzzle flash exploded just past the zombie and its brilliance cut into my eyes and right into my brain like a red hot ice pick. I shook my head to get away from the pain, nearly knocking off the goggles.

If I had made the mistake of focusing on the zombie, then whoever was out there made the mistake of firing from too far away. From what I could tell, my attacker was over fifty yards away just off to my left. They were kneeling, and from what I could see, they were bobbing their aim back and forth, clueless of where I actually was. At least, that’s what I hoped.

They popped off a quick shot and the bullet flew harmlessly off into the darkness. The sniffing zombie whirled around as fast as a zombie could whirl and went off in the direction of the shot.

With the night vision goggles, I held a distinct advantage over my adversary. I could see him, but he could only guess where I was from our past shots. It wasn’t really fair, but I didn’t give two shits about fairness. These crazies were ready to feed me to a pit full of zombies.

Even with the goggles, targeting my attacker was still at the far end of my abilities, so I considered just letting him shoot until the zombies zeroed in him. But I had Rosalita and Chuck both down and at any moment a zombie could stumbled over any one of us. So, I knelt down and took aim.

The big zombie was getting closer to my attacker, shuffling in one direction and then moving back. It wasn’t a collision course, but it was going to be close.

I guess my attacker got the heebie-jeebies because he took aim and blasted the head off the approaching zombie. This, of course, got the attention of the other zombies in the area.

The attacker must have seen his predicament and decided it was time his own re-enactment of Little Big Horn. When he rose, I saw it was the giant. All six foot six of him. Through the night vision goggles he looked like the Jolly Green Giant, but just not very jolly.

I had suspected, after the beating Chuck gave him, he’d be out all night, but that’s what I get assuming anything in this zombiefied world. He let out an intimidating roar and started his charge right at me, firing as he came. Bullets whizzed by me and couple cut up the grass in front of me.

He kept coming like an NFL lineman intent on sacking the quarterback. A zombie moved on an intercept path between us, but the giant blasted it to pieces with several well placed shots.

I aimed and took a breath, my finger poised on the trigger. I waited a full second and pulled the trigger. My bullet struck him in the chest and blew out his back in a spray of dark green matter. At least, that’s what it looked like through my night vision goggles. He grunted, spun, stumbled and fell. He let out low pitched scream of frustration as he lay there, cursing into the night.

He was one tough son of a bitch. First, he took a whack from Chuck’s nunchucks and then he took a shot in the chest and he was still alive. But not for long.

The only problem was that my shot gave up my location. Fortunately, the zombies were more interested in the giant as he bellowed a stream of curse words into the night. I knew they’d come for him first, but they would finish him off and it was only a matter of time before they came for Rosalita, Chuck, and me.

I watched as the zombies slowly converged on the giant. Through the night vision goggles, they looked like geriatric ghosts as they shuffled and shambled excitedly toward the cafeteria that was the giant. He was going to make quite a meal. I watched and considered sparing him from being eaten alive, but if I took another shot, the zombies would zero in on me quickly. I looked away when the first zombie fell on him.

He fought them off for as long as he could, then I listened as he screamed, pitiful yells like an animal wailing in the night. It was so bad that I wished I had shot him.

After they finished their giant-sized meal, the zombies rose and started in search of a second course and that would be us. More and more zombies clogged the center of the field, wandering in the darkness, their arms out, reaching for nothing, but grabbing for everything. All of Jeb’s people who had come out with us were either dead or had taken off for the compound.

I estimated there were still well over fifty zombies in the field and I also estimated their chances of stumbling across any of the three of us were high. I decided to reduce their chances and duck walked over to Chuck. I prodded him twice and he moaned. I took that as a good sign. I grabbed him and dragged him back over to where Rosalita was in a slight depression in the ground. I figured that was helping us stay out of view.

“Mr. Grant, you must go,” Rosalita said. “Save yourself.”

“Rosalita, you’re going to piss me off in a minute if you keep that up,” I said as I looked back at the compound. It would have a been a good run for me to make it back, but I couldn’t leave Rosalita and Chuck alone.

“Can you check Chuck out?” I asked. “I think he was shot.”

She sat up and gingerly crawled over to Chuck and began to feel around on his body. I kept track of the zombies wandering the field. Most were still massed around the giant (or what was left of him) while a few shuffled about aimlessly. The cover of darkness was the only thing protecting us. If one of them stumbled across us and I had to shoot, the party would be on and we would be the guests of honor at their buffet table.

“Mr. Grant, I can feel a bullet hole on his side,” Rosalita said. “There is some blood, but I can’t tell anything else.”

I moved over Chuck and said, “I thought he was wearing a vest?”

“He is, but the shot hit right at a seam on his side.”

“How bad is he?”

“His pulse is still strong, but he has lost a lot of blood.” I watched as she tore a part of her shirt, wadded it up and stuffed it under the kevlar vest.

Rosalita had worked as a nurses aid earlier in her life and had learned a little about taking care of medical emergencies. That plus patching up what she said was a hell raising husband had taught her the basics of battlefield medicine.

“We’re on hold until the other group comes with a truck or something,” I said.

“Do think they are coming soon?” she asked. “They have been gone for a long time.”

“Soon. They’ll be here soon.” I said trying to reassure myself as I did her.

Something moved just in the corner of my vision and when I turned I saw a short, but broad looking zombie headed directly at us. Its arms were outstretched and there was no doubt that it had seen us. Fortunately, zombies don’t have the sense to communicate and yell things like, “Here they are,” or “Come and get it.”

Still, its approach put me in an a real pickle. I really wanted just to shoot the damn thing, but the sound and the muzzle flash could certainly signal where we were to the other zombies. I turned and inspected Chuck and quickly spotted his nunchucks. I had a better chance of busting myself in the nuts if I attempted to take the zombie out with those, so I kept looking.

He still had the grenades, but those were a last resort. I finally discovered a nasty looking long bladed knife strapped to his leg. I pulled it free from the scabbard and stood up, ready to take on the zombie. Really, I wasn’t ready, but they say motivation is the key to winning, so I fooled myself into thinking I was ready.