Zombie Fallout 3: THE END .... (25 page)

"What about me?" he asked, realizing what I was asking.

"You, Porkchop and Blake are first and foremost going to protect your sister. Secondly you are going to protect our escape if it’s needed. If you hear me or Justin yell 'Bug Out,' that means we're going to be coming out that door in a hurry and you need to shoot anybody that comes out after us. If you don’t hear any yelling, you shoot whoever comes out that door. Got it?"

"Shoot the bad guys," he replied.

"That's about it in a nutshell. Protect your sister. We'll get your mom and dad." I hope.

The telltale sound of ripping material made further explanation an unworthy waste of time. Justin and I eased through the first set of doors hopeful that whoever was on the other side was too busy with what they were doing to notice. I stood up, quickly peeking through the observation window in the door.

"There are two to our left, neither is holding their rifles. One is almost immediately in front of us. The only thing he has in his hand is his dick. The fourth is the ringleader and he's just off to the right. Mrs. Baker is right behind him, Doc is tied up almost against the far wall. Now remember like I taught you. There are combatants and friendlies in this room, acquire your target before you shoot. You take the two on the left, I've got the other two."

I blew out three quick breaths. On one, we each pushed through our respective door. In three shots Justin had dispatched of his targets. I was not nearly as lucky, Dickhand had moved to get a better view of the ensuing rape. My door had slammed into his back, slowing my progress. When Justin had begun to open fire, the ringleader had pulled out a knife and true to any piece of shit had used Mrs. Baker as a human shield. Dickhand had fallen completely over when I finally shoved him out of the way.

I had my AR up and pointed at the leader's head but he made sure to make as little of a target of himself as possible as he hunkered behind the much smaller woman. Dickhand thought this was an opportune time to try and stand. A solid kick from my combat boots to his rapidly diminishing hard-on gave him pause to reconsider his efforts.

"Oh, oh fuck. Sam he kicked my junk," Dickhand moaned.

"Listen," Sam said. "We can share, I mean she's a fine piece."

I pulled my gun tighter to my shoulder.

"Fuck, fine!" he yelled. "You can have her, there's plenty more meat here. You…you just put that gun down and tell your friend to do the same and I'll just get out of here."

Dickhand was still on the ground writhing and moaning.

"You let her go and I promise you I won't shoot you."

"Oh I know that trick, you won't shoot me but he will." He said gesturing over to Justin.

"I swear to you as a man of honor neither of us will shoot you or harm you in any way."

"What about Drew there?"

"You mean Dickhand, sure, take his ass with you."

"Can I grab my guns?"

"What do you think?" I said sarcastically.

Sam didn't like the odds. He didn't know that we had a vested interest in Mrs. Baker. To him she was just a war prize. We'd kill her as fast as we had killed his other two buddies. To him there was very little stopping us from wasting everyone in the room.

"You won't kill us, you swear?"

"I already told you, take this piece of shit," which I prodded with my foot sending him into a fresh set of wailings "and get the fuck out. You're trying my patience."

"Fine, you fucking assholes, but she would have been so sweet!" he said. As he pushed Mrs. Baker to the side, he held up both his arms.

"Drop the knife." I told him. "Fuck you" was his not so pleasant response.

I shot him in the elbow. His shattered joint flopped down uselessly and the knife clattered to the floor.

"You fucking promised!" He screamed, clutching his shattered arm. "You fucker!"

During the ensuing exchange Dickhand had managed to crabwalk past me and was halfway through the first set of doors.

"Dad." Justin said motioning to the nearly prone man making a not so hasty retreat.

I was tempted to let him go and let Jesse and the boys exact their own fair share of revenge, but I did not want to burden them with that. Besides Dickhand was naked from the waist down and nobody, especially a ten year old girl, should be exposed to that. I pulled out my .357 and put one straight through his spine. He collapsed heavily to the floor under the crushing weight of the magnum round, dead.

"You fucking promised."

"Yeah about that, I'd like to say I'm sorry but I'm really not." Two rounds to Sam's chest sent him skidding across the floor and nearly into Doc Baker's lap. It would be weeks before I could shake the nightmares from this encounter, even if a greater good had been obtained. The end did justify the means. But is using a bad method to get to a good end, good in and of itself? How was this one going to end up on the ledger of my life, in the win or loss column?

"Mike!" Jesse yelled during the lull. "Can we come in?"

"No!" Justin and I yelled in unison.

“
And why are you yelling in here? How do you know we’re even alive?” I yelled.

“
Well, because you’re answering me.” Jesse said without any hesitation.

“
Pragmatist, we’ll be out soon, you guard our withdrawal.”

Doc's wife, Elizabeth sobbed in the corner as she did her best to repair her torn garments. Justin had untied Doc’s restraints and the doc was busy administering much needed care and attention to his wife.

“
You guys alright, Doc?” I asked softly.

The Doc looked over at me, his wife’s face buried into his shoulder. “You came just in time Mike, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you, and you brought my kids, all of them?” He nearly sobbed.

“
All of them.” The relief in his face was palpable. “Doc, you saved my life and gave me my son back. I’d say we are fairly close to even. Justin can you check the cabinets and see if you can get Mrs. Baker a robe or something. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“
Is your family here too, Mike?”

“
Not yet Doc.”

Doc understood the implications of my actions. I had forsaken my family’s safety for his.

“
Justin.” The Doc said. “In my office, I have some scrubs and a long jacket. Buddha's in there too, grab a cookie out of my desk and he'll follow you to the ends of the earth for it. There's also half a case of your shots. You’ll want to grab those. I’m sorry Mike.” The Doc said turning to me. “I didn’t have enough time to make more.”

“
How many are there?”

“
About sixty-four.” He said.

Shit, Justin's dose was one a day, two months was better than no months, although six months would have been better.

Justin was back in minutes. He had grabbed extra scrubs and was making a makeshift backpack to carry his much-needed viral disease management syringes.

“
Mr. … Mr. Talbot. I mean Mike.” Porkchop yelled. “We’ve got some squishies.” That was Porkchop's name for the deaders.

I had grabbed the pendants off of the dead and gave one to Doc and Elizabeth and kept the extras. Elizabeth seemed hesitant to accept anything from her would-be attackers.

“
Zombie repellant.” I told them. “I strongly encourage everyone who values their flesh intact to hold onto it.”

Doc seemed suspicious at best, but as for obtaining visual proof of its effectiveness, his kids rushed in to see their parents. The reunion was powerful, tearful, joyful and for necessity was exceedingly short.

I went through the doors first. A wall of zombies was coming down the hallway. It looked like the last day of school and everyone was trying to be the first one out for the summer. They were shoulder-to-shoulder width wise across the hallway and asses to elbows deep for the entire length.

I ducked my head back in. "Any other way out?"

"That bad?" Doc asked.

"Bad seems like such a lackadaisical verbiage to use right now. I might go with something more along the lines..."

"Dad." Justin said pointing to the kids.

"Everyone have their vial on them?" I asked.

Head nods dominated the room. I took that as an affirmative.

"What about my patients?" Doc asked.

I looked at him and threw as much compassion into the gesture as I possibly could. They were dead. A battalion of zombies were sweeping down the hallways. Even with our immunity we could not use that as a shield for others. I felt sorry for them, I truly did. I hoped each and every one of them was hooked up to a personal pain dispenser so they could load up before the attack. We could stand and fight and take down a fair number of those approaching but it wouldn't be enough, and in the end the only thing I would have gained would be the death of my family. I had already risked enough. A loving God would see that, a vengeful one would not.

Elizabeth had Rachael smothered in her arms. Porkchop and Blake looked envious. Hell I think we all were, who doesn't want to be wrapped tight in their mother's arms when danger is near. Walking amongst the dead in such tight quarters was soul-rendingly difficult. The ripped open flesh of the dead exposed torn muscle and sinew. Broken arteries and veins stood out at odd angles on some of the more damaged. Occasionally intestines and bowels were dragged and trampled behind the unlucky soul. I wondered if Elizabeth would notice if I scootched Rachael over and sought my own piece of solace in her bosom. Anything resembling breathable air had been completely pushed out of the hallway. Chunks of smell assaulted our nasal cavities. Breathing through one's mouth was equally as bad. It's one thing to smell the dead, it's another to taste them. Blake or Porkchop, it may have been both, sprayed vomit freely, the acidic bile smell was comparatively welcome. Like an island of normalcy, we wove through the sea of zombies, unscathed physically. Mentally, well this was the stuff that a life time worth of nightmares are made of.

When we finally managed to emerge into the daylight, it only improved our vision of hell on earth. We were firmly entrenched within the innards of the dead. Heavy gunfire was coming from the area we needed to get to. The good fight was still being waged but the outcome had been decided the moment someone thought to use 600 ton trucks to attack the camp. Doc was garbed in cammies. The dim watted light of an idea came to mind.

"Doc, sorry but you need to take point. And put your pistol away."

"Mike, I don't like being left in the dark. I'll defer to you because you have military training, but it seems to me we could use all the fire power we can muster right now."

"Doc we've got to time this right, for now, you are our prisoner. In another half mile or so we are going to have to play it the other way."

"Makes sense, but I don't like it."

"That's about the way of most of my plans."

I was thankful that the zombies were heading in the same direction as we were. It made getting to our destination worlds easier. Within ten minutes we were just outside the kill zone. The Marines had set up a final perimeter around the base housing and were not planning on taking any extra ammunition into the afterlife. Zombies were piled six or seven feet high in a miasma of parts, some were still moving but most weren't. We were going to have to find another egress. Even if we thought (which I wasn't) about scaling that assemblage of strewn bodies, there was no guarantee we wouldn't meet the same fate of those we had scaled. We would just be another throng of attackers to a machine gun emplacement.

The zombies had been temporarily thwarted by their extra-dead comrades. It would only be a small lull. Already, the wall of decaying flesh jiggled like an over-tall Jenga tower with two of its base beams removed. I was stuck. This was not how I had envisioned our return, held at bay by our own while completely ignored by the zombies.

"Mike?" Doc asked nervously.

"Thinking, Doc."

"Anything yet?"

"You'll be the second to know."

"No plan then?" he asked.

I knew he was nervous and so was I, but he wasn't helping.

'Hey Mr. … Dad
,' ran through my head so clearly I turned a complete 360 looking for Tommy.

"Tommy, you shouldn't be out here." I yelled. I was concerned for his safety and I thought he might be doing another Rambo stunt like he had back at Little Turtle with the kids' bow and arrow set.

'I'm not out there, I'm in here.'

"Where's here Tommy? I'm going to need a little more information than that."

'In the apartment, where are you?'

"Tommy, you're right here, I can hear you, how is this happening?" I was more than a little confused. Which in itself isn't all that difficult a thing to do.

'We're family now Mr. Dad.'

"Holy crap! You can talk to me in my head? How long have you known?" I asked in amazement.

'As soon as you adopted me, geez don't you know anything?'

I wanted to ask him how in the hell would I know. This kind of thing usually didn't happen to me or any other person for that matter. Sarcasm aside, I asked him if I actually needed to speak or could I think the thoughts. My next concern was how much into my rancid mind could he read. I sometimes didn't like the things that popped in occasionally for an extended visit. I really didn't need anyone else privy to that. I'd check that out later if there was a time in the future.