Aftershock: A Collection of Survivors Tales (17 page)

It has been slow going since we left the rest stop. That massive herd was following the highway. We sent a few scouts out to see if they had switched directions, and the result of their recon was no. It was disturbing to hear about the size of that swarm from one of our own. Bill is not known to exaggerate. The man is a straight shooter, and his words were “it never ends.” After that news it was decided that we would take the back roads the rest of the way.

This left us open to attacks as our caravan slowly made its way through towns. The one advantage was our ability to pick up supplies as we went. I suggested to Mick that Garrett get a vehicle of his own. We needed to show up with as much supplies as possible. It would also add the advantage of an extra set of wheels if one of our other cars becomes incapacitated. We’ve had to dump a few cars along the way. Things break, or get stuck. Shit happens.

Garrett had cozied up to Neil’s daughter Emma. She’s a pretty girl, but not the brightest bulb in the batch. Neil was pissed at first, but the more he got to know the kid the more he liked him. One thing about preppers is we always have to have a plan B, and Neil realized if something happened to him Emma would need a plan B. So that is what he is grooming Garrett to be. It helps if someone out here cares about your loved ones as much as you do.

Neil and Emma lost his wife and her mother on the way to meet us. Emma’s grandmother was in her seventies, and was hard of hearing. As they loaded up she didn’t hear the dead as they approached her. Her daughter saw them and tried to save her mother. The two women were no match for the two large male zombies. Neil pulled Emma away as she tried to take off after her mother and grandmother. He had to shoot all of them. By the time he met up with us Emma had forgiven him for what happened. Neil told the story once, then it became one of those things you didn’t bring up.

Mick, Amy and Zoe were good additions to our group, too. They had been on the road so much longer than the rest of us. There were things that they had seen, or done that we hadn’t thought of yet. I was just happy we didn’t pick up a drain on our resources. Our group was a solid 20 before we picked them up, and one of the benefits of it being only preppers was our self-reliance. We shared, but any family in our group had the ability to fend for themselves.

After they joined us, we took a page from Mick’s book and started sleeping on rooftops. Strip malls became our favorites. They stretched out with enough space for us to be able to spread out. The only disadvantage we had to deal with was the buildup of dead after a night or two on the roof. We would get too comfortable, too noisy and that would draw them in. In order to get back on the road, we would have to send a clearing party down to wipe out the ones that we attracted.

Mick was helpful with that, but Amy was a real badass. The first clearing party she took part in all the men stopped helping, and just stared in amazement. She had a bat, and was just swinging at the bleachers. One after another they fell. For guys like us a sight like that was probably one of the sexiest things we will ever see. A drop dead gorgeous woman who can take care of herself was awe inspiring. Mick picked up on the vibe, and kept her extra close for the next few days. None of us would have ever pushed that line, but damn it was something.

Time went on, and they just became another family in our group. They had earned our trust, and they trusted us in turn. That was the real thing that was going to save your ass out here. You have to be able to trust the group you are with. You could have all the supplies in the world, but if you can’t rely on the group of people you are with, you will end up dead. It’s just that simple.

One of the towns we pulled into had a different feel to it. It was quiet. The roads looked staged. Very quickly we felt that we were being herded. The paths were too obstructed, only to be next to one that was too clear. Neil signaled for us to turn around when it happened. Shots rang out. Neil’s tires took the hit. Then the car behind his was targeted. They shot right through the windshield. Our defense plan went into effect.

It was quickly determined that the shots were coming from the rooftops on each side of the road. All members of our group ten and older were armed, and knew what to do if we were attacked. All of our training and drills had been for this moment, not for the living dead, but for the living who wanted us dead. I almost felt sorry for the son of a bitches who thought we were easy pickings. They had opened Pandora ’s Box attacking us.

Within seconds the first sniper was dead. That left three more. They weren’t quite as stupid as I had hoped, and when they saw what they were up against they took the cowards way out and hid. The noise was going to attract the dead, that was a sure thing, and unlike our foes we were down in the hornet’s nest. Every minute or so one of them would get ballsy enough to pop up and squeeze off a round. What a waste of ammo, and after a few shots we had killed another one of them. I am pretty sure it was my son who hit him. Damn, I was proud.

The remaining two started moving in between shots. Neil took a round to the leg. Emma pulled him in my camper. My wife followed in to administer first aid. We were working like a well-oiled machine. Mick signals me that he is going to work his way up on one of the roofs. Amy followed behind him to give him cover. The rest of us kept the aggressors pinned down while he climbed up. Once he was on the roof we heard three shots. Mick stood up and gave us the all clear signal.

He was wrong though. The roofs were clear, but it was hardly over. Three trucks came around the corner from behind us. We were blocked in now. Neil’s car was dead in the water unable to move, and so was the one behind his. This group had set the trap so that only one car could pass through this street. Now with their friends behind us there was no way out. Amy scaled the building to put herself above the scene with Mick. The signals came down that we had six to deal with.

By now the dead had made their way through the maze of obstructions to join the party. The children were herded into my camper. The trucks occupants were unaware of the situation, and that was the only thing we had going for us. They didn’t know that their sniper friends were dead, and that we had two of our own on their rooftops. Without that knowledge they felt safe enough to pour out of the trucks. Mick and Amy shot two immediately.

The secret was out. We lost two good men in the next few minutes. The dead did our job for us and swarmed one of the trucks. Both men were dead in moments. Their screams were sickening. When a man is killed with a gun it is quick, but being ripped apart by demons is slow and hellish. With only two left the men realized they was no way to win this firefight, and they jumped in the last truck and tore ass out of there. Our attention was then focused on clearing the dead as quietly as possible. We didn’t want to draw anymore in.

Mick and Amy descended from the roof, and out came Amy’s trusty bat. The more rotted the zombie, the better it worked. The really old ones just exploded when she hit them. Garrett ran over to his aunt with a sharpened shovel, and made sure she wasn’t overwhelmed. I took the heads off of five of those dead freaks. It was a rush beyond any drug you could ever use. My body felt nothing, no fatigue, nothing but adrenaline. Soon enough it was all quiet.

Then the crash came. My whole body was exhausted, spent. I had used every ounce of energy in the fight. We had never been up against anything like that before, and even with all of our training our bodies were not used to it. That is all of us except Mick and his crew. They had been living like this for so much longer, and they were used to the surge of energy. They had done this over and over to survive. The most any of us had fought before this was four or five zombies. We had always been smart enough to scout and turn if the direction was too dangerous.

It was good to see as a group we could handle it, but we needed to work on our endurance if we were going to make it to the place on the flyer. Once the area was deemed clear for real, I entered the camper to see how my wife was doing in dressing Neil’s gunshot wound. That woman was an angel. She had it cleaned, sealed, and bandaged. He was lucky, and the bullet had passed straight through. The two useless cars were to be emptied, and the supplies were moved to one of the attacker’s trucks. It was almost full on fuel, and the tires looked good.

While that was being done I had Mick check the buildings with me. These assholes had been trapping groups in this little trap for a while now, and had accumulated a large stash. The only two things I was interested in were the weapons, and water. Our other supplies were more than enough to get us to our destination, but these two things would secure our welcome when we got there. We took load after load of guns out to the truck. I lost count of how many we picked up. The two cars were pushed to the side of the road, and we moved on.

The scouting party I gathered never made it out to this other camp. We barely made it a couple miles past the outer wall before we ran into a herd of those fucking things.

We were moving at a pretty good clip through the trees. Me and the 4 guys I thought would be healthy enough to make the march. I wanted to bring the kid, but I figured the Rev was going to be pissed enough at me over this little field trip; I didn’t want him pissed at Max too. Besides, if something went down while I was gone, the townies were gonna need him.

We were cutting a trail north through the woods headed toward the highway. Jimmy thought maybe we could boost a car and drive at least part of the way there. We came out of the tree line into this little housing development. I figured, shit, if it was a car we were looking to steal, we should be able to find one here. I told the guys to keep their voices down and stick close to my back. We moved slowly around the backyard of a nice looking McMansion and out in the street were about two dozen moaners. They hadn’t noticed us yet. They were just kind of standing around looking down at their feet, sort of shuffling around a little.

I had to wonder if maybe we couldn’t just sneak right past them if we were quiet enough. Jimmy broke that train of thought right the hell off when he pulled his revolver and started shooting. I don’t know what the fuck he was thinking and I never got a chance to ask. I pulled my pistol and called the retreat as all two dozen zombies turned and started toward us. Did I mention Jimmy was shit for accuracy with a handgun? We were so busy firing at the moaners in front of us that we didn’t see the handful come out of the house behind us.

I heard a choked yell and turned just in time to see Jimmy get pulled down by two fat fucks in bathrobes. It was his own damned fault for starting this mess. The rest of us hauled ass back to the woods shooting back over our shoulders. Jimmy only screamed for a minute.

We ran all the way back to the wall. I thought we outran them. I was sort of right. We hit the wall about ten minutes ahead of them. We busted through the gate and I went straight for the Rev’s place. Max was playing with his dog in the street. He saw me running and tore ass to catch up.

He yelled as he was running, “What’s going on?!”

I was too out of breath to respond in anything other than one word sentences. “Coming. Moaners. Lots. Get. Guys. Wall.”

He got what I was saying and turned mid-stride to gather a fire team. This kid was good. I crashed through the door of the Rev’s house. He was at his desk with that damned journal. I stood there a second, hand on my knees trying to catch my breath.

“What’s this about? Why did you…”

I waved my hands to get him to shut up so I could get a deep enough breath to explain.

“We were in the next town and we ran into some trouble. Some of it may have followed us back here,” I told him.

“What were you doing there? And what do you mean some of it may have followed you back? What followed you back?”

“Relax Rev. There’s maybe twenty moaners. Max already has a team at the wall to take care of them. It’s under control.”

Now it was his turn to wave his hands at me. “Under control?! We are about to be attacked at any minute because you decided to go out on a beer run or for whatever reason. We will continue this conversation later, for now get to the wall.”

It took a little longer than my ten minute estimate, what I didn’t count on was their group picking up stragglers along the way. There had to be at least a hundred and fifty of them, probably closer to two hundred, but with numbers like that a rough estimate was all you needed. By the time they showed up I had shooters on the wall waiting, I just didn’t have enough. As soon as I saw how many there were I leaned over to Max and told him to tell the Rev that it was time to go. I told him to go calmly to the Rev’s place and tell him it was time to blow this pop stand. Max took off to sound the alarm with his dog right behind him.

There was no way we were going to keep this herd out for long, if at all. At least The Rev had at let me draw up a bug out plan and run a few drills with a handful of key people. A big part of that plan was in the shitter already. We didn’t have enough time to load everything I wanted to take into the trucks. I also had to hope that the Rev would let the kid run the show. Max knew what to do. The Rev would likely just stand there rebuking the moaners while they took us all down.

The first zombies staggered into range. “All right boys,” I called out, “You know what to do. Take your time and make your shots count.”

I sighted my first target and let my training take over. I heard shots popping off to my left and right as the men on the wall did the same. Not every shot was a kill, I would say it was probably closer to one out of ten for some guys, but we held them longer than I thought we would.

We even managed to drop around thirty of them by the time they made to within banging distance of the wall. We kept firing as they piled up against the base. There were too many of them and we all knew it. Not one man left his post, though; I got to hand it to them for that. Nobody panicked, nobody ran. They just kept shooting as the wall started to buckle inward.

I heard the first of the trucks fire up as the wall started to shimmy against the weight of all those bodies. I sounded the retreat.

“Fall back! To the trucks, we are bugging out!”

One after another, we jumped down and hauled ass for the line of pick-ups and cargo vans that Max and I had rounded up for just this occasion. Most of the townies had crowded around the area, each carrying a bag or a rifle or both. They were hurriedly loading gear into the vans and looking frantically over their shoulders in our direction. I waved them on with both hands, looking for Max and The Rev. I heard the wall fall as I made it to the edge of the crowd.

“Get in the vehicles! Now!” I yelled as I turned to take a firing position. I thought if we could drop a few more of them it might buy us some time. Max dropped to a knee about five feet to my left and started shooting. A couple other guys from the wall took positions next to him.

Moaners were pouring in through the busted section of fencing. I didn’t want to say anything out loud but I was going to have to give us pretty long odds on getting out of here. We were taking them out, just not fast enough.

I heard the rest of the trucks start up and I looked back over my shoulder to see a couple of guys throwing open the front gates. Suddenly this seemed the worst idea in the world to me. Probably because as soon as the bar went up another stampede of zombies fell through the gate in a giant, biting mass. Fucking great, our odds just got a whole lot longer.

The men at the gate were swallowed up, I don’t even think they had time to scream. One lady in the cab of the lead truck did. She slammed it into gear and spun the back tires spraying me and about twenty others with gravel and dirt. A couple of the people too close to the truck got cut up pretty bad, but in about three minutes they weren’t going to care. The truck finally got some traction and took off toward the open gate. She mowed down about six or eight moaners before running out of momentum and the tires started slipping in the mud again. I watched out of the corner of my eye as the driver tried to gun the engine and only succeeded in burying the back tires in the dirt and mud.

As soon as the vehicle stopped they were on it, pounding the doors and trying to climb into the bed. By this point there were so many people screaming that I couldn’t tell which screams were coming from the truck and which weren’t. Not like it mattered by then.

I saw Max take off toward the truck firing his .22 pistol as he went. He even took a couple down and that is damned hard to do at a full run. I don’t know what his plan was; I don’t think he did either.

The driver threw the door open and tried to make a run for it. She didn’t make three strides before being pulled to the ground. I saw her go down behind the truck, then I saw them pile on top of her, then I saw chunks of meat start flying through the air as they tore her apart.

Max skidded to a halt, turned on his heel, and started toward another truck without missing a beat. Rocky was right at his side the whole time. It’s like he and the dog had some kind of telepathy. I knew guys who spent a lot of time in combat together that got that way. I had a second while reloading my rifle to wonder where the fuck the Rev was and why we weren’t rolling out with what we had loaded. I started to call out to Max when I got my answer. The Rev came barreling out his church with a ruck in one hand and a bible in the other. He started toward one truck, but stopped dead when he saw a swarm of moaners pour over about a dozen townies in the back of it. Max was frantically waving from the cab of a cargo van and the Rev moved toward that one instead.

We were losing townies left and right. Anybody with a weapon never stopped firing though. I saw some brave bastards dying ugly. Looking back I think that’s what pissed me off the most. We should have been long gone before this ever happened. Had we left when I said we should have, we would be sitting pretty in a bunker by now. Not getting chewed up in the courtyard trying to get out before we all died. I started to fall back toward Max not so much to get away from the moaners, but because I wanted to get my hands on the Rev. More specifically, I wanted to get my hands on the Rev’s throat. I was almost out of ammo and as I looked around I saw more than half of the townies lying on the ground in various sized chunks. FUBAR doesn’t quite cover it, but it comes close. That morning we had around 80 men, women, and children eking out an existence within our walls. I doubted there were more than 15 of us left right now. I was going to choke the shit out of the Rev for this. I said a quick prayer to his god to keep him alive long enough so I could.

I threw myself into the back of the cargo van that Max was driving and slammed on the front wall to get him to go. There were 7 townies back there with me, 4 men, 2 women, and one of Max’s friends. I spotted a pick-up with a handful of townies in the bed falling in behind us. We rolled the back door down as Max crashed through the half open gates and took off down the road. Every one of those townies has the same shell shocked look on his or her face.

Back there rolling around with us were 8 or 10 duffle bags and half a dozen ammo cans. I could only hope we had more ammo in the pick-up. I knew Max knew where to go. Our plan involved a rally point twenty miles up the road. I had to hope the pick-up was going to meet us there. For now I slumped down against the side of the truck, closed my eyes, and tried to get those screams out of my head.