Soldier On: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (13 page)

Daymon shouted, “
Hurry
, get up there and look for anything big and bulky to fill the stairwell, anything to slow them down.”

The shirtless man labored up to the second level close on Daymon’s heels.

Cade stayed behind for a moment to provide rear guard. He hoped the two men wouldn’t get overzealous and start raining antique furniture down on his head.

There were twenty-seven rounds of 5.56 left in the magazine. Cade was used to keeping a mental count, it was an invaluable lesson learned in basic training and later perfected in combat. The need to conserve ammo was real, so he switched the selector from burst to single fire. Making all of his rounds count would be tantamount to surviving the day.

It was a humorous but deadly scene as the crush of walking dead jammed through the four foot wide hallway. The two ghouls at the head of the pack were tripped up by the fallen zombie Daymon and Cade had double teamed. The undead pileup provided Cade with clean kill shots; he popped off two rounds at the prone monsters.
 Five downrange, twenty-five rounds remaining
, Cade’s inner voice told him. The impacting 5.56 lead split their heads wide open, showering the rest of the ghouls with hair and rank cerebral fluid.

More undead filled the far doorway, blocking out what little light there was. The horde clamored over the three carcasses, moving much too fast for Cade’s comfort.

About to be trapped downstairs, Cade grabbed the bannister, careful to keep his weapon from banging in his wake and hauled ass up the stairs three at a time. He was halfway up the stairs when something heavy grazed his heel.

Daymon watched with concern as the piece of furniture shattered with an ear splitting crash on the stairs right behind Cade. The old bedside table, built a century ago bounced all the way to the bottom of the stairs.

“Look out below,” Daymon cried.

“
A little late
,” Cade countered.

The second wooden missile was much bigger and sturdier. The ladies vanity, Edwardian in origin Cade guessed, came crashing down on top of the moaning swarm. One of the ghouls took a direct hit. The two hundred pound piece of furniture pinned its body to the stairs, its head protruded from underneath while its arms and legs flailed in a futile attempt to get to the meat upstairs.

“Sorry dude, that was close. If it wasn’t for the incredible Hulk here,” Daymon said gesturing at Hoss, “that thing wouldn’t have gotten over the hand rail.”

“No worries. No blood no foul,” Cade replied.

“What’s the situation Sarge?”

Since Cade was still wearing his desert camo it was obvious that the question was directed his way.

“I have a sinking feeling there are way too many of those things for us take down.”

As soon as he finished his sentence, the stained glass inlay on both sides of the ornate front door burst inward and fell with a heavy thump onto the wood floor.

Tattered zombie arms probed the new breach. Soon multiple heads, their lifeless eyes darting about, explored the openings. One of the creatures squeezed its body into the small gap next to the door, sacrificing both breasts in the endeavor before becoming hopelessly stuck.

The big man exited the master bedroom with three bronze lamps clutched in his hands. After depositing them over the side he went back into the room for more to add to the mound.

“Give me a hand.”

Cade followed Hoss into the room where he had apparently been trying to rend the footboard off of the sleigh bed. It only took one kick from Cade’s boot to finish the job for him. The dovetail joint failed and the side rail of the bed broke free. Cade was pleased to hear the loud crack, especially since it wasn’t the front door failing.

It only took the big man two stomps before his weight shattered the second bedrail letting the massive King footboard fall freely to the floor. The two men pushed the curved footboard through the doorway and muscled it over the railing. The slab of mahogany sailed into the throng of walkers; all of whom were already having a difficult time navigating the growing pile of corpses and broken furniture.

“How many people live in this little burgh?” Cade asked as he poured accurate rifle fire into the moving wall of dead flesh.

Over the increasing moans, he could have sworn that he heard someone say two hundred.

“Come again?”

The obese man yelled to be heard over the grunts and groans of the stinking corpses. “
I said
, two hundred, maybe more, because it’s summer and the lake draws vacationers here from the big city.”

“That’s bad news; I only have two magazines left. The rest are in the saddlebags of my bike.” Cade changed the magazine and charged the gun in one fluid motion. The former Delta Operator was back to dropping undead before the empty clip clanged to the floor.

Their situation seemed to be going from bad to worse. Cade thought about the satellite phone tucked in his pocket and decided he would use it as a last resort.

Their garage sale sized barricade was growing larger. The footboard served as a good foundation for the other assorted crap that Daymon was heaving onto the mound.

The big man was sweating profusely while he worked on freeing the headboard. Finally, after breaking off the long side rails, he was ready for assistance once again.

“Sarge, Skinny...help needed.”

Daymon was out of ammo for his crossbow so he hefted the machete and went to lend a hand. It took a lot of grunting and dragging from both men but they finally succeeded in carting the headboard to the rail and hefting its weight over the top. Three undead were crushed flat and immediately stilled by the falling chunk of old growth.

The remaining zombies thrashed about, tangled up in the bedding that Daymon had ingenuously floated over the railing.

There was only a few feet of open headroom left in the stairway. Cade went looking for a cherry to put on their sundae. “In here big guy and grab those bed rails.” Cade bellowed to be heard over the moans of the dead.

A brilliant white, cast-iron claw foot tub sat against one wall of the master bathroom. Cade decided that it was going down the stairway even if it killed him. The long boards preceded the big man as he entered the bathroom.

Cade stepped aside to make room.

“Put yours here,” Cade pointed at the six inch gap between the tub and the wall and then he inserted his the same way at the foot of the tub. The added leverage of the bed rails allowed the men to easily uproot the clawed feet from the tiled floor. Cade lithely moved out of the way as the tub crashed over onto its side. The big man was not so fast, he howled out in pain while jumping around on one foot and holding onto the injured one, all the while his pale white flab jiggled with each hop. The tub left a deep indentation on his wingtip shoe.

“
It’s broken...broken. Owwww
.”

“Suck it up and help me or I’ll break the other one.”

Whimpering, the big man helped push the weighty tub out the door. It took them a little bit of finessing to get the vessels feet to cooperate allowing them to wiggle it through. Cade kicked five of the carved balusters out of the railing and then returned aft to help push the tub over the edge. It barely squeaked through, fell six feet and lodged upright fully blocking all access to the second floor.

“We’re effed now,” Daymon grumbled, looking at Cade, while trying to ignore the panting, sweating, shirtless mound of flesh.

“If we’re going to die here together, we might as well be on a first name basis. I’m sorry I called you Sarge and Skinny.” He extended one sweaty mitt towards Daymon, hoping to forge a detente.

Daymon’s hesitation was obvious.

After wiping his right hand back and forth on his black slacks, the man extended his hand once more. “My name is Hosford Preston, Attorney at Law.”

“
I knew it
. Let me guess they call you Hoss...right?” Daymon joked with the man.

“Only my friends,” the lawyer replied as he rubbed his ruined toes, “and I’m sure they’re
all
dead now.”

Daymon couldn’t hold back. “Newsflash...nearly everyone in this town is dead and currently banging on the pile of shit that’s clogging the stairs.”

“You can call me Cade, Sarge is a little below my pay grade.”

“Tell me then
Cade
-where
is
the rest of your army? I’ve been holed up in the attic of my law office for days and haven’t seen any authorities. Those freaks had me treed until they heard you and that other guy roll into town. That’s when they began wandering away from my practice. I waited for them to leave the front door area and then I made the dash here.”

Daymon was seething mad and fingering his green handled machete. “So you
led
them here?”

“It wasn’t my intention; they spotted me leaving the building. One of them started that fucking moaning and it escalated from there. The next thing I know there are twenty of them dragging after me. I barely made it here alive.”

Cade sensed the mass of dead crushing against the improvised obstruction. Groans and creaks from the stressed staircase and handrail comingled with the nonstop moaning.

The Gerber combat dagger slid from the sheath with ease. Cade cut a long swatch of fabric from the bare box springs sitting amongst the splintered remains of the antique sleigh bed. After dividing the single piece into six smaller swatches he passed them to the other two men.

“What the hell am I to do with these?” asked the insolent lawyer.

“They aren’t big enough to silence that pie hole of yours,” Daymon said as he pushed a piece of the cloth into each ear.

A light bulb illuminated in Hosford’s skull and he proceeded to plug his ears as well.

Cade removed two packages of MRE crackers from his cargo pocket tossed them to his fellow prisoners and then retrieved the satellite phone. He powered the device up and deployed the stubby aerial. The little technological marvel was developed solely for the military. Cade was familiar with its workings and used one like it during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The device didn’t work the last time he powered it on, so Cade crossed his fingers and hoped he’d be able to get an uplink on this attempt. Cade searched his other pocket; it contained a flare gun and a canister of purple marking smoke. Duncan had slipped them to him before he left Camp Williams.

“Daymon, hold the fort down. I’m going to try to get us a ride.”

Daymon interpreted it to mean Cade wanted him to keep an eye on the loose cannon named Hosford Preston.

Outbreak Day 5

Stanley, Idaho

Beauregard Hampton was one of the most important men in the city of Stanley. Of the 100 or so residents, he was the only one with keys to open the only grocery store in town. If the lights weren’t on at Hampton’s Mercantile you weren’t getting your milk-or beer for that matter.

Bo, the octogenarian owner of the store, was there every morning before 6 a.m., without fail, except for Sunday which was
his
holy day.

Where are all of the people?
Dan looked at his watch, it was after 7 a.m. The main drag was deserted save for a dusty, brown Dodge Power Wagon parked awkwardly away from the curb. He was hearing the niggling voice in his head, the one that had saved his ass many times.

With an air of caution, Dan walked toward the darkened general store.

A shiny brass shell casing skittered and bounced in front of him, accidentally propelled by his scuffed leather boot. Recognizing the spent cartridges scattered on the sidewalk and what they probably meant, the voice inside of Dan’s head suddenly started screaming, “
Danger, get the fuck away
.”

Dan knelt down, exhaling from the stab of pain in his bad knee. He retrieved one of the spent shell casings and examined the markings,
7.62x39mm, Wolf brand, probably from a Kalashnikov.

Once he was in front of the store and adjacent to the abandoned truck, he noticed there were multiple bullet holes punched into the fender and drivers side door. Given the way the puckered indentations walked along the sheet metal Dan deduced it was from a full auto burst.

A shiver ran through his gut while a sense of dread washed over him. “I better check on old Bo,” muttered Dan.

The retired Marine released the strap with his free hand and withdrew the black, Colt Model 1911 .45 caliber pistol from the holster on his hip. A bullet was already in the chamber. Dan cocked the hammer before he tested the doorknob.
Unlocked,
he nudged the door inward gently with his forearm. The bell above the door jangled, already tense and on edge Dan jumped, his heart rate quickened and beads of sweat erupted across his forehead. Fear in small doses was necessary-but unchecked it could get you killed; this, Dan was well aware of.
You’d better be careful old man. It aint your first rodeo...but remember, the last one was a long time ago
.

The bell finished its alert, replaced by a noise barely audible over the hammering of his heart.  Faintly, from a darkened corner, came the sound again.

The old vet’s ears weren’t deceiving him, a raspy wheezing emanated from somewhere beyond the empty shelving. Dan imagined his friend Bo incapacitated or seriously injured, and waiting alone through the night for someone to come to his aid and how frightening that would be for an eighty-five-year-old man.