“Absolutely, Sir,
”
Wilder snapped back to Butsko. “No one dies tonight.”
Chapter Four
1
Will to Heal Center
Spicewood, Texas
The banging on the gym door got louder and more violent. The zombies knew the group was hiding in there and they were hungry.
Walt had no idea what they should do, and it drove him crazy. He felt as though he’d let everyone down.
A loud bang came from behind them. When they turned, they saw that Cheryl had grabbed one of the twenty-five-pound kettles and was slamming it against the reinforced window.
“What the hell are you doing?
”
asked Jonas.
“I’m doing something!
”
Cheryl yelled back. “I’m not just gonna sit in here and wait for those bastards to crash through the doors and tear us apart.”
“But aren’t there more of those things outside?
”
Dennis asked.
“Probably,
”
Cheryl calmly responded. “But at least there’s some place to run out there.”
Dennis grabbed a weight and helped Cheryl.
“Grab one of the barbells and wedge it into the doors,
”
Walt said to David. “We need to buy us more time.”
“What the fuck are these windows boarded up with?
”
asked Dennis.
After David secured the gym doors, he effortlessly grabbed one of the fifty-pound kettles and raised it over his head.
“Move,
”
was all David said.
David ran toward the window, and just when the others thought he was going to jump through it, David threw the kettle. The boards splintered as they gave way.
David picked up the kettle again and moved back.
“I’m going again,
”
was all he said.
This time the kettle went straight through the boards. Samantha and Joe grabbed a few towels that used to be for wiping sweat off the equipment and wrapped them around their hands. They ran over and began to pull at the boards from the center of the hole.
The others followed Samantha and Joe’s lead, and before long they pulled away the broken and splintered boards.
Soon there was a hole big enough for them all to fit through.
They turned their heads as the steel barbell wedged into the door clanked to the ground. The hands of the zombies could be seen through the crack in the door.
“Let’s go, let’s go!
”
shouted Walt.
“I’d usually say
,
‘ladies first,’
”
David said to Cheryl, “but let me go just in case we have friends waiting for us out there.”
There was no time to argue, and Cheryl stepped aside and watched as David jumped through the hole.
Luckily, the outside motion-lights had already been triggered, so David had some light. As his eyes adjusted, he looked down and saw the outline of a zombie at his feet. Acting purely on instinct, he swung his axe down, severing the creature’s head from its neck.
Now able to see, David realized he’d wasted a swing. The zombie was already dead. About fifty feet away, David saw a figure standing between the trees. David squinted as he tried to get a better view and saw something in the stranger’s hands. David was certain the figure wasn’t one of the infected.
The figure started to lift whatever it held in its hands and David instinctively put his hands up and shouted, “Don’t!”
A loud
crack
filled the nighttime sky and David heard a noise right behind him. David turned to see a zombie’s brains splattered against the side of the house.
The creature had snuck up behind David, and whoever was over by the trees had just saved his life.
“Is it clear?
”
yelled Cheryl through the hole.
Looking around, David didn’t see any other threats.
“It’s clear!
”
he yelled back through the window. “Come on.”
Cheryl, Samantha, and Dennis came through the window first, quickly followed by Jonas and Joe.
Walt handed Stevie to David and was putting his right leg through the window as he heard the gym door come crashing in. Walt counted somewhere around ten to twelve creatures flood into the room and run straight toward the window.
Outside, the group heard Walt shouting, and David grabbed Walt’s leg and pulled him through the window like he was a rolled up carpet.
“They’re coming,
”
Walt said. “Which way do we go?
”
he asked no one in particular.
“Let’s just run,
”
said Samantha.
“We can’t do that,
”
Joe said. “If we scatter off into the woods, we’re done for. We need to find someplace to lay low until the morning.”
“Where the hell do you propose we do that?
”
Samantha barked back. “The entire house is overrun.”
“Follow me!
”
Walt yelled over the others. “Come on!”
David looked around for the mysterious figure who had saved him, but in all the confusion, David had lost him in the darkness.
Walt ran alongside the house and hesitated briefly as he reached the corner. He looked around and motioned for the others to stop.
“Around the corner are the doors to the root cellar,” whispered Walt
“We have a root cellar?
”
Cheryl quietly asked.
“It is another leftover from the house the Center took over,
”
explained Walt. “The root cellar hasn’t been used in close to a decade, and the door to it in the house was boarded up. There’s no way the infected could find it.”
“What the hell are we waiting for?
”
asked Dennis.
“There’s also four zombies walking around over there,
”
Walt continued.
David peaked around the corner. “Okay,
”
he said. “I’ll take the one that’s off on its own. The rest of you pair up and take them out.”
Jonas and Samantha, Dennis and Cheryl, and Walt and Joe teamed up. Walt held his hand up and used his fingers to silently count to the three.
As Walt’s third finger went up, they all charged from around the corner to see that the zombies had come closer to them. Walt crashed into the nearest creature and fell on the ground, losing hold of Stevie. Walt looked up to see the zombie glaring down at him. What surprised Walt was that he recognized the zombie standing over him. Walt stared directly into the eyes of Hector.
The price of Walt’s hesitation would have been deadly if not for Joe’s quick response. Joe swung the piece of pipe against the side of zombie-Hector’s head and cracked its skull.
Despite the injury, Hector jumped onto Walt, ignored the assault by the pipe, and immediately pushed down to bite Walt.
Just a few feet away, Jonas and Samantha faced off against another creature, this one no older than ten years old.
Samantha hesitated with the mallet as she saw the face of her long dead baby boy on the creature.
“Samantha!
”
yelled Jonas. “Snap out of it!”
Samantha shook her head and brought the mallet down on the infected child’s head. At the same time, Jonas thrust his hedge clippers into the creature’s belly, pushing it to the ground. Samantha kept beating the zombie on the head as it fell to the ground, stopping only after the creature stopped moving.
David easily took down his target with two swipes of his already-bloodied axe. David’s first swing caught the zombie in the ribs on the left side. When the thing bent over from the first hit, David brought the axe down, decapitating it.
As David turned, he saw Cheryl as she pulled the heavy broomstick out of a zombie’s eye socket while Dennis had it pinned to the ground with his knives thrust through the creature’s arms. With his cleaver, Dennis chopped almost all the way through the thing’s neck.
“Over here!
”
the others heard Joe shout.
They ran over to see Joe’s rebar through the thing’s cheeks as zombie Hector tried to bite Walt.
Samantha gasped as she recognized that the creature who was trying to kill Walt was once the man who sat for endless counseling sessions with her.
Walt stared into Hector’s dead, yellow eyes and recognized something almost human. The zombie had a look he was all too familiar with.
Hunger.
But it wasn’t just the hunger to eat that Walt saw in Hector’s eyes. He saw a craving—a desire that was beyond the zombie Hector’s control.
Walt saw addiction.
“Walt!
”
David yelled. “Push the damn thing up higher!”
With his remaining strength, Walt leaned into Hector and pushed him up.
From the corner of his left eye, Walt saw a man dressed in combat fatigues racing toward him. Before Walt could say anything, he saw the butt of a rifle slam into Hector’s head and shatter what was left of Hector’s skull.
Hector’s yellow eyes rolled into the back of his head as his body fell to the right. Cheryl didn’t hesitate as she slammed Stevie down into the dead, familiar face.
Bone, blood, and brain squirted everywhere as Cheryl pushed down on Stevie harder, making sure there was no coming back for this thing.
“Holy shit,
”
Walt said as Joe helped him up. “I thought that was it for me. Hector…”
“We all got your back, Walt,
”
said David, interrupting Walt. “We all have each other’s backs.”
“You know damn well,
”
said David as he placed his arm around Walt’s shoulders, “that that thing wasn't Hector.”
Walt nodded as the image of Hector lunging toward his face continued to flash through his mind.
Walt looked at the stranger and started thanking him.
“I’m glad I could help,
”
said the stranger, cutting Walt off before he could continue, “but we better get the hell out of here. I lost count of how many of those things flooded into the house.”
Walt nodded and was about to say something when he heard Dennis.
“Over here!
”
Dennis yelled to the group. “I found the cellar doors.”
They ran over to Dennis as he brushed aside the dirt and leaves that had accumulated on the doors. As Dennis pulled open the doors, they were met with blackness.
They all nervously looked at each other as they imagined what kind of Hell waited for them in that darkness.
“It’s my idea,
”
said Walt as he pushed his way to the doors. “I’ll go in first.”
Cheryl handed Stevie to Walt and rested her hand on his shoulder.
“We’re right behind you, Walt,
”
Cheryl said.
“We need to hurry up,
”
Jonas said. “It’s not gonna take those things long to realize we’re outside. They’ll be running around the corner in no time.”
Walt took a deep breath and jumped into the root cellar. It wasn’t a long drop, but he remained in a crouched position as his eyes adjusted to the darkness.
He didn’t hear any noises or sense any movement.
“Come on, everyone!
”
Walt yelled up. “It is safe!”
David was the last one to jump into the cellar. As David closed the doors behind him, Cheryl handed him his axe. Everyone got real quiet as they listened to what sounded like a herd of zombies trampling across the closed doors.
They all stood in silence, barely breathing, surrounded by the darkness.
2
Lago Vista Golf Course
Lago Vista, Texas
Mears, Jones, and Hall were in a tight “V
”
formation as they swept the woods, looking for the source of the noise.
Mears, the most seasoned soldier of the three, took the lead, and no detail escaped his eyes. Looking at the ground, he could see what looked like half a dozen or so footprints, and there were many broken branches and signs of visitors.
Mears even looked up in the trees, just to be safe.
They were about half a klick from the clubhouse, and Mears knew that Wilder had their six. Mears always tried to find the positive side of every situation, no matter how screwed up things might be, and being able to work with Butsko and Wilder was the silver lining.
Mears had never met anybody like Butsko and Wilder in all his days in the military. Butsko was mysterious for sure, but he was also one of the most intelligent CO’s he’d ever met. Wilder was the same—intelligent and a fierce warrior on the battlefield. Mears had only seen Wilder go into “warrior mode
”
a few times, but it was something he wouldn’t wish on even his worst of enemies.