Doug pulled out of the base. He checked his rearview seeing that they were already putting the gates back up from the ground. Doug looked to Joe and said, “So where do we go now?”
Joe pulled out a pack of smokes wincing from his split lip when it touched the filter. “I got an idea.”
Chapter 6
Supply run
Shaun swung back and forth bringing his leg up and getting it on the edge of the platform. He took a deep breath and pulled himself back up on the platform. He felt cold fingers brush against his leg as he pulled it just out of reach. The feeling sent chills through his body as it reminded him that he could be that close to death at any moment.
McQuaig screamed when she saw the dead coming. She knelt down trying to be ready for the impact and saw the top of the building and realized she was falling backwards off the platform. She kept hold of her machine gun and when she hit the safety strap she held tight and the jerk of her momentum stopped her dead where she was. McQuaig looked down seeing the Turned less than five feet below her.
She looked over to Shaun for help but could see his feet dangling in the air and was doing his best to try and get himself back to the platform. She brought her legs up holding them as high as she could out of their reach. She watched as Shaun finished hauling himself up and waited to hear gunshots knowing they would be her saving grace. Shaun instead started raising the platform to heights that made her stomach turn. She screamed, “Fox, how fucking high are you going?”
“High enough that those things can’t reach you. I’m not strong enough to pull you back up and they aren’t going to stop trying to get you.”
The dead were slamming into the lift over and over again with everything they had. Shaun watched Hammond, knowing it was too late. Those that hadn’t been trying to knock the lift over were solely focused on what was left of him. They had him pinned to the mower, now crippled from a broken back. Two of the Turned were ripping at his arms trying their best to remove them from their home. Hammond was screaming from his injuries. The words would haunt Shaun as he screamed, “Fox, Fox, help me, I need you to help me!”
Shaun tried taking aim but there was nothing that he could do for Hammond. One of the dead gripped the boy's jaw with both hands and separated them until it snapped and tore off his lower jaw. It picked the teeth off that were in its way and started to gnaw on the flesh hanging from it. Shaun’s stomach turned from his sky rise seat to the horror below. Hammond’s screams faded as he passed out from the pain and blood loss.
Shaun raised his pistol uncaring about saving bullets at the moment or head shots and sprayed the five dead on the tractor with an entire magazine. He left them crippled on the ground where they lay. They were still reaching for Hammond. Shaun was unsure if he would have enough left to turn and aimed, firing two shots dead center into the teen’s skull decimating it. He thought not even the boy’s own mother would recognize him after that.
McQuaig screamed next and Shaun scanned the floor praying that Aslin and Greg would be on scene in a very short time. He knew that if they were here that they’d be firing already and the two of them, for the time being, were on their own. The only thing that he currently felt thankful for was that he saw no more dead coming. He was hoping that these were the only threats in the building. Shaun dropped his magazine and slid home a new one releasing the slide and started firing down at the dead. McQuaig was trying to as well but could not shoulder her rifle in a way that she could aim with it. When Shaun saw this he screamed to her, “McQuaig, McQuaig, sling your fucking rifle, shoot them with your pistol. I can’t do this on my own!”
McQuaig slung her rifle and pulled her nine millimeter. She switched off the safety and the two of them began firing just as quickly as they could. When they’d run out of the dead Shaun realized the reason there’d been no help is that gunfire was erupting on the opposite end of the building. He looked over the side of the platform at McQuaig swinging. “McQuaig, did they bite you? Are you alright?”
She shook her head no scaring him to death thinking that she had gotten bitten. She screamed back up, “Of course I’m not alright, you idiot! Get me down from here. I’m dangling like fucking bait. What are those gunshots, do you think it‘s Aslin and Greg?”
Shaun hit the lift to slowly begin taking it back down. When they got within a few feet of the ground, he slowed it down letting McQuaig get her feet under her and then the strap off and out of the way of the forks that were holding the platform on. When she was freed from dangling the two rushed towards the gunshots. They did their best not to think about Hammond lying on the mower ripped to pieces.
*****
Greg and Aslin were walking the perimeter of the building. Greg was keeping watch while Aslin was marking down exactly where the things were that they needed when they had deemed the place temporarily safe. Greg said, “You doing okay after seeing that….that, whatever it was that you saw, Aslin?”
“No, Greg, I'm not doing all that great, to tell you the truth. It depletes what small amount of sanity I still have left when I have to witness and then partake in things like that. Those things are soulless. It makes me wonder how God could possibly let those things continue living, or whatever it is that they are. You think that even as busy as he is that he would still come down and do something to rid the world of them.”
“Aslin, that is only assuming that he is watching over us. You don’t think that he has something more important that he is dealing with?”
“You realize this isn’t just Iowa, it isn’t just the Midwest, right? What I mean is that this thing, this….this plague is everywhere. There is nothing keeping it from spreading. So what I’m saying Greg, is that there is no way at all that even God himself almighty could continue on daily without seeing one of the dead. I just don’t see how it could be possible. The only thing that could be worse than that is if there really isn’t a god, but for as many lucky breaks as we have had I'm not going to make any conclusions, yet.”
Greg started to say something when a snarling came from around the corner. He knelt down looking through the rafters and could see more than one pair of legs through them. Aslin, who didn’t have the angle that Greg did, had to ask, “What is it, are we looking at dog or dead?”
Greg said, “Dead, and there are plenty of them over there.”
“How many is plenty?”
“Probably at least twenty of them, I can’t say for sure. What do you want to do? They just seem to be sitting there and swaying right now. They must not smell us yet.”
“We back away, Greg, and get somewhere that we can have a vantage point to fire on them. We need to find out where the other three are. They should have been back by now. I don’t know what is taking them so long. I don’t want to fire off randomly and pray that they aren’t in the firing zone”
Greg said, “You know Shaun, he probably got a lift and started gathering the crap that we need to get. He doesn’t need anyone babysitting him or holding his hand. You give that kid something to do and he gets it done. It is as simple as that.”
When they started to back away for a safer position, a yell erupted from what seemed to not be far away, followed by a hail of gunfire. The Turned that had been comatose sprinted in that direction. They very quickly came for Aslin and Greg who were just trying to find a safe spot to shoot from. The two knelt using a box to steady their rifles. They knew there were too many of them to try and take them all out at once. Greg figured this out quicker knowing he wasn’t as strong of a shot as Aslin. He brought the trigger down spraying a slew of bullets directly into the approaching dead. Knee caps, spines, and hips exploded as they made their way towards them.
Aslin started picking them off after Greg laid them out for him. Greg looked over smiling. He said, “I thought we were screwed!”
Aslin dropped his magazine slamming in a new one. “This might have been a bad idea; of course, I don’t know when it would have gotten any better.”
Something cold and wet hit the back of Greg’s neck and when he looked at it he saw that it was blood. He looked up slowly only to see two of the dead, three rafters up staring down at him. One looked like it was smiling. He tried to adjust his rifle but it leapt down before he could do anything. Greg screamed, “Aslin, watch out!”
Aslin looked up just in time to see their feet as they were coming down, growling as they did. He gripped Greg’s collar, throwing him out of the way. Greg screamed no as he slid backwards on the smooth floor. The two Turned landed on Aslin who didn’t have time to raise his rifle after throwing Greg free of danger. The two dead came down in a blur, one landing on his shoulders knocking him to the ground and the second landing on his abdomen. Aslin lost his rifle in the fall and the world began to spin when his head slammed into the cement floor.
He blinked away the tears knowing he had no chance of surviving if he didn’t do something quickly. Greg sat up taking a knee and fired off three shots into the first one’s head. The force of the shot sent it off Aslin leaving a single diner. It screamed at Greg as it watched its brother fall to the side not moving. It dived in towards Aslin’s neck, mouth open and ready.
Aslin brought up a hand as quickly as possible. He missed gripping its face and stuck his thumb in its eye socket and pushed it back away from himself. He brought a knife up and spun it to the side. It tried reaching back up but Aslin slammed its head down on the ground as he removed his thumb and buried the knife up to the handle in its skull and twisted. The anger and death in its eyes faded and it let out its last breath.
Aslin fell off the side of it breathing heavy. Greg was still trying to debate if he could have taken out Aslin if he had gotten bitten. Greg pushed up from the ground walking over slowly to make sure that he had not gotten him. “Hey, hey Aslin, are you okay?”
Aslin who was usually calm as long as he was not being aggravated, pushed up from the dead on the ground ripping his knife out in one pull. He started to kick the dead, yelling, “No, Greg, I’m not fucking okay, do you understand me? I’m fucking pissed, these mother fuckers keep coming from everywhere and I swear to god that I want to kill every one of them more so each time I step out of those damn gates.”
Greg tried to say something but was unsure what would make him feel better. He waited for him to stop kicking it only to realize his desecration of the body was not nearly close to being done. He brought up a steel toed reinforced boot and brought it down repeatedly until the skull beneath his foot squished. When he looked up he saw Shaun and McQuaig staring at him. He dropped the knife and brought up trembling hands to rub through his hair. He stopped when he realized they were covered with blood. Aslin held his hands out in front of him thinking they could infect him. They followed Aslin, picking up his gear, and he found a water fountain that he washed his hands in scrubbing at the blood and gore in between his nails until they were clean.
When it hit home that he only had two out of the three teens he’d tasked with clearing the opposite side of the building it dawned on him that there was bad news coming his way. “Where’s Hammond at, Shaun?”
Shaun shook his head no and Aslin who wasn’t in the mood, yelled, “What the hell does that mean?”
“He’s dead, Aslin, do you want to know the horrific way that he died, and that we got to watch the entire effing thing? Fine, he was on the ground because he doesn’t like heights. McQuaig and I went up on one of the lifts because we’d found some of your stupid supplies. Well, like always we split up and bad things happened. The second we were up there getting things to take back the dead exploded out of a set of boxes. There wasn’t anything that we could do to stop them. We tried taking them out and there were plenty that we did, but we almost got taken out when they hit the lift. I figured they’d get weaker over time without food but I don’t think that is the case at all, not that I have any idea when the last time these things ate was.”
Aslin said, “What do you mean? Wait, do I want to know?”
“You already opened Pandora’s box might as well finish the story. We were on top of the platform. The ones who did not take Hammond for a meal saw us and tried to kill us, of course. We had to have been thirty foot up and they hit the damn lift so hard they almost knocked it over. We lost our balance and McQuaig, thank God, had her safety strap on or it would have probably been just me standing here.”
Aslin looked to her and she nodded. “He’s right, Fox saved my ass. We put the safety straps on and when they hit I went right over the side. They were trying to reach to get me but once he righted himself and got back up to the top of the platform he raised me up out of reach and then took out the dead that were left. Once we got to the floor again that was when we heard you two firing like a couple of crazy men.”
“We aren’t crazy, McQuaig!” Greg said. “We wanted to survive. There were a slew of them standing around the corner. We were trying to get away but when you guys started firing that was when they lost their shit and came running. They decided that we were a better meal than you and bum rushed us. It was everything we could do to still be standing here talking. I didn’t have time to do head shots when we were less than like fifteen yards from being one of them or being in them. I sprayed across their knees and legs and when they went down Aslin fired off into skull shots.”
McQuaig was staring at his thumbs and asked, “Then why exactly did he have so much of those things brains on his fingers? I mean, what happened to you?”
Aslin started to talk and then decided he’d had enough and started walking back for where his supplies were. Greg said, “He pushed me or threw me out of the way…not sure honestly, it happened so fast it was hard to grasp. When he did there were two of them that knocked him down to the ground and when they did it was almost the end of him. Aslin had his arms practically pinned down and I fired at them taking the first out. The second didn’t give me a shot and I was handicapped not wanting to shoot Aslin. When it came after him to bite, he shoved a finger into the things skull. Aslin flipped it off of him and then buried his knife blade under its chin. I think it probably messed with him. It is probably the closest that he has ever been to dying in the field.”