Death Has Fallen: Freedom Rock Chronicles: Book 1 (12 page)

              As I pulled the rifle down, I looked over at Aaron and that big grin was on his face again.  He said, “Ha, I knew you were not completely useless, good job spotting them.  Now we go hunting just me and you.”

              These words made Jaime feel uncomfortable instantly and it was noticeable.  I asked Aaron if Jaime could join us since we both were brand new to this and were both in need of training.  He looked down upon her smiling face with a look of doubt. 

              Looking at her he said, “Well teaching a girl to hunt undead is a first for me, but since you look like it won’t bother you come on.”

              With the news Jaime was ecstatic.  She quickly jumped out of the truck offering to carry anything we needed.  Both Aaron and I handed her our extra ammo giving her the chance to feel useful.  We then set our sight up on the hill to the right.  It would allow us to gain higher ground and a better angle on the targets. 

As we climbed the hill Jaime and I tried staying as low as Aaron and mimicking every movement he did.  The hill was not especially large, but had a very rocky floor and was covered with thick brush.  Aaron moved without effort leaving us a few meters behind.  He turned looking at us giving the expression, “HURRY UP”.  We tried our best, but were unable to catch up without standing up and running.  Reaching the top of the hill Aaron pointed us to the ground so we took cover.  He looked through his scope at the three or four undead who had come out of the tree line to investigate the trucks that passed.  I pulled my scope up trying to see what he saw.  The undead must have been too far up to see the trucks pass and were wandering around aimlessly attempting to find their location and surprised with the lack of success.

He turned to me commanding, “You take the first shot.”

Looking through the scope was one thing, but after my run in with that hunter I really didn’t want to take a life even if it was undead.  I held my gun for over a minute and my arms began shaking.  Irritated Aaron said, “Put the damn gun down.”

For a minute I held my head in shame.  Seeing this must have sparked something in him and he said, “I was like you once.  What you see down there are people and everything in your gut is telling you not to shoot them.  You are not weird or broken.  Every solider I have ever trained struggled with shooting these undead especially when they could see their faces through the scope.  Understand something, these people you see have been cursed.  They are roaming around the road right now because they are starving.  The only thing they can eat is raw flesh.  Now put yourself in their shoes.  Would you want to be walking through a forest starving and tearing apart every animal and man that crosses your path devouring them? Nothing to live for, but the death of something else.”

Both Jaime and I were set back with his speech.  Thinking about it I really wouldn’t want to spend my life killing others for food.  Day in and day out constantly seeking flesh of the living for sustenance.  I turned to him and said, “I am ready.”

He nodded pulling the scope back up to his eye looking at the targets.  Jaime had brought binoculars and was also watching the shot.  Slowly I pulled the scope up to my eye and in my mind I thought of myself down there wandering around aimlessly.  Yes I would want someone to put one in my head and with that thought I targeted the closest placing the crosshair right on the tip of his head and slowly pulled the trigger.  The 300 boomed which seemed louder than it actually was since we were dead silent. As it shot my aim was knocked back by the kick.  I couldn’t see what happened, but as I drew the scope back down to my target the spray of blood and headless corpse told the story. 

The ones walking around couldn’t see us, but heard the shot and came running in our direction.  There was now three and quickly Aaron told Jaime to pull out her pistol while he aimed and fired blowing the head off one that was in a full sprint.  I reloaded taking aim, but finding it much more difficult to hit a sprinting target.  Aaron could tell by my hesitation and told me to sink one in the middle of their chest.  The shot rang out once again dwarfing the sound of Aaron’s 270.  As I brought my gun back down the undead I shot was nowhere to be seen. 

I only saw one running at us.  He turned to Jaime, “Your turn.”

He stood up stepping behind her and placing the cross hairs on the beast that approached. It was easy to see she was shaken by the statement, and clumsily pulled her pistol out pointing it at the charging zombie.  One shot fired from a good distance off hitting the right arm, but not slowing him down at all.  Aaron whispered, “Take your time, wait until you have the head shot then slowly pull the trigger.”

Jaime had the sights pointing at the running figure.  She no longer looked shaken or nervous.  It was instantly apparent that Aaron was a very good teacher.  The zombie got close enough to see his eyes and hear the ravage snarling echoing from his mouth.  Even I hesitated somewhat, but both Jaime and Aaron stood as a rock with their weapons pointed directly at the beast.  As the runner hit ten yards out Jaime pulled the trigger and the man dropped where he stood.  She let out a gasp of air suggesting she had not been as calm as I thought, but still did amazingly well.

Aaron told us to keep our guns drawn just in case one was still up and moving or if more decided to join.  We all reloaded and began walking towards our kills.  For a moment I began feeling absolutely terrible, the shot that destroyed Caz’s head kept rewinding in my mind. After a while Aaron’s words soothed my fear of doing something wrong.  As we approached the closest body Jaime had hit her mark dead on.  The man was old, probably sixty five or seventy, but he ran like he was in his twenties.  The bullet hit him square in the forehead ensuring he would not be getting back up.  We started moving to the next body and Aaron held his hand up telling us to wait.

As he moved forward I was fearing the shot to the chest did little to cripple our enemy.  We watched Aaron closely and within a second he raised his rifle and shot at the ground.  Fearing what had happened we moved quickly when he waved us forward.  As we came up he told us the woman I shot had been crawling. 

“Even in that state they are deadly, remember one bite and you join them.”

As we looked down I saw what my blast had done.  The woman was lying face down in a very lovely blue dress.  There was a large hold in the back of her head from Aaron’s gun, but that was not the surprising wound.  My shot went through her chest and blew a hole in her back taking a large chunk of spinal cord with it.

After staring at the wound in her back I asked Aaron, “How the hell was she able to move, I thought they needed all their organs same as us.”

He turned looking at me and said, “Yes they do, but the more time the virus has to change them the more indestructible they become.  A shot through the heart can take weeks sometimes to finally finish one off.  We are not sure how indestructible they come, the longest we have seen is undead carrying the virus for a month.  They may become almost impossible to kill after months or years.  I hope the head shot will continue to work.”

I shook my head surprised at what I saw.  Everything I thought I knew about these undead was changing in front of me. They were truly the perfect warriors.  The dead had no fear, no pain, and now it looked like they were becoming indestructible.  I feared at what we would find in the coming weeks and months within Freedom Rock.  After a while though I remembered the Zombie outside my house who was hit by the car.  Everything in its body was busted and broken, but the head.  Perhaps that is the one place that must remain intact. 

We continued down further and came across a young man.  It was hard to tell his age with the majority of his face missing.  His clothes suggest mid-twenties or perhaps early thirties.  It was easy to see this one died as soon as Aaron’s bullet hit it.  Finally we made it to my first shot.  Aaron began chuckling a bit and muttered, “We may have to find you a smaller gun, this one’s head is completely gone.”

“I know it is a big gun, but that is why I like it.  Take down anything you shoot.” I smiled as I thought about my shots.  For once I was happy I had ended the misery of another human.

Chapter 14

After we were done checking our kills we began heading back to the truck.  I was surprised to see the amount of ground we covered in such a short time.  Julie seemed especially happy that she did well and no one died.

“Well, I think you two performed extremely well and would trust either one of you at my back.  Welcome to the team.”

That was it we passed our real test and were trusted security officers with kills to our names.  It may not sound like much, but both of us smiled the entire way back to the truck and for a while on the road.  The only thing which ended our smile was passing a gas station and seeing multiple cars empty and dead bodies littered across the ground.

Slowly we pulled in checking every corner we could check while in the back of the trucks.  The store seemed abandoned and all the cars empty, but the only way to know for sure would be to walk through it all.  We left the driver in The Dozer with a nice sized pistol and a couple extra clips while the rest of us walked through the wreckage.  First we checked every car out in the lot.  The dead which remained on the ground were eaten to the point that no virus could bring them back.  This area was the bloodiest thing I had ever seen and everyone else seemed quite disgusted as well.  Everyone except for Aaron that is.

As we began going through all the cars I walked up to Aaron and asked, “How does none of this get to you?”

He looked at me with the eyes that seemed dead and said, “After war, death loses most of its surprise.”

“What were you in the marine’s?” I said just guessing hoping to learn a bit more about my new friend.

“No I was an Army sniper.  I spent a lot of time taking heads of living targets.  I have seen all this before.  Bodies destroyed like this, but not from feeding.  In the war it was IED’s that would do this kind of damage.” 

As he said that his face told me in a very stern fashion to drop it.  I walked back over going through some of the beds of the pickups lined up behind the gas station.  This was a scavenger’s paradise.  Almost every vehicle parked here was packed full of supplies.  These people were just trying to stop for gas as they fled and they packed as if they wouldn’t be coming back.  After we got done checking all the cars we headed into the store making sure it was safe before we started loading our trucks up.

Aaron was the first through the door.  As he moved in a shot fired instantly and he dropped to the ground.  We all feared he had been shot, but upon closer inspection whoever was doing the shooting inside was a terrible shot.  I quickly yelled, “We are not here to hurt you!”

After yelling one of the drivers and I grabbed Aaron’s feet and dragged him outside.  We then looked him over to be sure nothing hit him.  He was in a bit of shock, probably expecting an undead to launch at him rather than a bullet.  The man in the store shouted back, “Get out of here.”

We all looked at each other puzzled.  How the hell could the owner be alive with all this chaos outside? 

Aaron had finally recovered enough to take back control yelling inside, “Hey we are from a small town full of survivors.  We are just looking for important items to take back to our people.  We don’t want anything in there if it is yours.” He then adjusted his tone matching our sense of confusion, “How the hell did you live through all this out here?”

Finally the man realizing we were not out to hurt him or steal everything he owned told us to come in with our hands up so he could see were not up to trouble.  Single file leaving one outside ready to come in shooting if necessary we walked into the store.  The man stood behind the counter as if the zombie apocalypse was not going to stop his business. He held a twelve gage shotgun, but extremely thick glasses making it obvious why he missed Aaron.  As he saw we outnumbered him and could have easily come in shooting, killing him and taking his items he set the gun down while saying, “I wasn’t here.”

Aaron continued, “So you got here after all the chaos outside?”

The old man, “Yes sir, if I would have been here them damn cannibals would have been full of buckshot.”

Aaron looked at the man closely and with seriousness and said, “If you stay here you will die.  If not from the walking dead then normal people who will come and steal everything you have including your life.”

With these word the old man seemed to lose his entire confidence.  He was shaking, though it was hard to tell if it was from fear or age.  He finally looked at Aaron and said, “The name is Old Jim, at least that is what my friends call me.”  He stuck his hand out a little warily as if still unsure of our intentions.

Aaron walked forward meeting Jim’s hand with his own, “The name is Aaron.”

The old man began smiling, as if beginning to believe we were good people and could help him out.  He then asked, “So where you guys from again? Didn’t you say something about a town full of survivors?”

“Yes sir, we have over seven hundred people over at the quarry.  It is about forty miles that way.” Aaron pointed down the road where we came from.

Seeing the old man’s interest in our town he immediately added, “Newcomers are always welcome, but you will be required to either work or fight.”

Old Jim looked a bit ashamed saying, “Well you seen my fighting skills.  I couldn’t shoot you ten feet away with a damn shotgun.  I am good with engines though.  I can rebuild them from scrap if need be.  I also don’t mind cleaning, cooking, or whatever else needs done if your camp is offering safety.”

Aaron looked him in the eye, “Old Jim I am sure there is a spot for you, if not I will make one.”

Seeing the kindness Aaron showed warmed the man’s face almost instantly.  He told us he would need to grab some things to throw in the truck then he would show us where all the goods in the store were.  As we looked around the store waiting for the old man it was very disappointing.  The store had been trashed, but it didn’t seem like much made it past the cars outside.  Only a couple minutes passed and Jim came flying out of the back office with the gun and a large duffle bag. 

“Well this is all I need,” he said patting the bag.

Aaron walked him out to the truck then back into the store.  Jim had a smirk on his face, “The store may look empty, but don’t be fooled.  Follow me.”

We walked behind the counter and into the back office.  He then walked straight out the back door and out into the dirt.  As he walked further out into the dust he was mumbling something about being called crazy.  He grabbed a shovel and began smacking it on the ground.  We all sat back looking at him somewhat interested, but mostly worried that he had lost his mind.  After a couple minutes of Jim walking around pounding the dirt with his shovel Aaron called out, “Jim, You ok?”

“Just give me a damn minute.  I am a bit forgetful.” He snapped back at Aaron, irritated he couldn’t find what he was looking for.

After twenty minutes of Old Jim smacking dirt the entire group wanted to go.  Aaron gave the ok for the group to begin loading everything from the cars into the trucks.  As soon as Jim heard this he shouted, “Don’t do that you will need both trucks for what I got.”

Once again interested, we all sat back and watched the old man beat on the ground.  He was sweating profusely and was out of breath.  Some of us began asking each other if he was going to die where he stood.  After another couple minutes we heard a loud ding.  We all ran over interested in what he had buried.  He asked for some help and we all began using our hands to uncover what he found.  As we uncovered it the metal roof came into shape. 

Old Jim reached down trying to pull it open, but was unsuccessful.  I asked if he needed a hand.  He shook his head and I stepped over beside him to give a pull.  The door didn’t come easily, but unmasked a hidden tunnel. All of us stood back shocked seeing the stairway leading deep in the earth.  We let the old man take the lead and all of us following closely.  The cement stairs slowly lowered us into the ground.  Light was limited and the air smelled as if it had been down here for years. 

Reaching the bottom of the stairs we reached a concrete floor.  Our team began looking around making note of the safety of this bunker.  Hearing this pleased the old man, he added, “Damn right it is safe.  In every direction there is three feet of solid concrete.  This bunker was made for a nuclear blast, I suppose this cannibal apocalypse is close enough huh.”

The room we were in only had a little.  All we saw was basic tools and materials someone would use for maintenance.  We lost sight of the Old man for a couple seconds then a loud noise made us jump.  The light hit our faces blinding us for a minute or so.  As our sight dimmed Old Jim slowly came into view.  He had a smile on his face and was standing next to a solid steel door with a punch code lock next to it.

“You ready to be amazed?” He asked still smiling.

With a look of astonishment on his face Aaron replied, “Hell yea.”

The old man slowly punched in a long code and an unlocking mechanism was triggered within the door.  He grabbed the large handle and began pulling.  Once again the frail little guy was not enough to open his own bunker.  Seeing his struggle I stepped in and began pulling with him.  The door slowly gave way showing the vault inside. 

As we stepped in the guns were the first noticeable items.  These were not the same personal fire arms our camp had stockpiled.  These guns were made for war.  Quickly Aaron became ecstatic reaching for the first M16 he saw. 

“Do you know how many men I killed with this little beauty, before I was trained as a sniper?”  He was looking at his new gun while speaking.

“Ha, you are a sniper then yes? Follow me.”  The old man headed to the back of the room and took one of the largest guns off the wall.

“Oh my god.  Is that a .50 cal? No they don’t sale those to citizens it can’t be.” As he stepped closer his eyes widened as he saw it was exactly that.

“You are right they are illegal as hell in the United States, but I have a few connections down in Africa that supplied me with it and most of the other weapons you see here.”  It was easy to see the pride flowing through the old man as he told us how he acquired all these weapons. 

The man looked at me waving for some help.  I walked over to him and helped him push back a door showing entrance into another room.  Rather than guns this room was piled to the ceiling with dehydrated food and 50 gallon drums of water. 

“Guys, fuck the guns check this out!” I yelled. 

They walked in and lighted up even more seeing the thousands of pounds of food and water stored here.  Every food and commodity one would need to cook was held within these walls. 

“We don’t have enough trucks to hold everything here.” I said bringing the mood down some.

Aaron turned to me and said, “I don’t care how many trips we need to take.  The supplies in here will provide our town with weeks if not months of survival.  Let get started moving the gun’s first then we will come back for the food and water.”

I nodded my head and walked with the group back into the armory to begin hauling guns outside.  As we walked towards the trucks, the driver still sitting patiently in the front seat of The Dozer smiled and jumped out of the truck as we walked towards him.  All our arms were full of different military grade weapons.  He ran taking a couple guns away from Aaron and the driver of the Chevy.  He asked, “Where did you find these?”

Aaron simply nodded towards Old Jim who was following us.  Between the five of us we were able to carry a decent load and we had the majority within the first two trips.  We finished grabbing the rest and headed out of the vault.  I asked the old man to lock the gate behind us just in case.  He was able to close the door by himself and we began making our way up to the sunlight. 

A couple of us dropped our supplies and quickly covered the entrance back up with the metal.  As we started kicking dirt over the entrance we heard the engines of what sounded like Harleys approaching.  Not knowing if they were friendly or enemies we began running towards the truck.  As we hit the store gunfire erupted.  The driver was standing with the door open firing at the five bikers heading towards us.  As I got a good look at the bikers I noticed they all had guns pointed towards our trucks and were unloading.  It looked as though they were trying to disable our vehicles which would make us easy targets.

We made it to our trucks before they completely closed the distance.  I jumped in the back of the Chevy pulling out my 300 and aiming towards the center of their group.  As I was doing this I noticed Aaron was doing the same with his 270.  I decided to wait a second to see who he was going to shoot.  His shot rang out taking the biker on the right side of the group with it.  I pulled the trigger hitting the center rider in the chest. I saw Jaime sitting next to Aaron in the truck with her pistol ready for when they passed.

Only two bikers had been killed.  The other three passed our trucks aiming at the driver of The Dozer.  When they passed I saw blood spray inside covering all the windows.   It was clear they hit him in the head.  Aaron and I ducked as they drove past still firing.  Jaime was holding her pistol just above the bed of the truck and unloaded as they came by.  She put a couple in the first one to pass dropping him right next to our trucks.  They pulled down the road turning around to make another pass.  By this time Aaron and I had both of our guns ready to fire.  I heard the crack of the 270 and watched down the scope as one of the last two fell over.  The last biker noticing he was alone and without a chance at killing the rest of us stopped and began turning to run away as fast as he could. 

No longer being under threat I put my gun down to hear Aaron screaming, “Kill him, if he has anymore in his group they will come for us!”

I put the gun back up to my eye.  The biker had made it a quarter mile in the few seconds.  I knew the bullet would drop quite a bit at this distance.  Not completely sure I placed the crosshair just a couple inches above his head and slowly pulled the trigger.  Even though the bullet found its target within seconds I was terrified of missing the mark and causing people in our town to die from an attack.  Finally the bullet hit the man and flung him in past the handlebars of the bike causing him to fall face first on the pavement.

Chapter 15

When the last man hit the road we all ran directly to our man who was shot when they passed. He was laying back against the front seat with a hole in his neck which had sprayed the blood all over the cab.  Aaron gently led him down the pavement and ripped his own shirt off to cover the wound.  I stared at the man wanting to render aide.  Aaron looked up at us with a tear in his eye shaking his head saying there was nothing we could do.  Our group fell silent and stayed with the man until he bled out.  We wrapped his body in a blanket and placed him in the back of The Dozer to be buried with the rest of the town’s dead.

After placing him in the truck we started walking to the dead bikers.  All were loaded with large pistols and long knives.  We took everything of value including the guns and bullets.  Needing gas we grabbed one of the gas hoses and cut out a long length.  Only a couple of the vehicles had any gas in them.  The bikes were all full, but each only held a gallon or two.

              Old Jim asked Jaime to follow him in the store while we drained what little gas there was to drain.  He came back out with a key ring which held a couple keys.  Interested I walked over to him to see what he was planning.  Seeing me he pointed at the ground saying, “There may not be a whole lot under there, but the pumps usually can’t drain the entire thing. I have a wet vacuum in the store and a couple hundred feet extension cords which should reach from the bunker which runs on its own power supply.”

              He reached down lifting a small cover to what looked like the fueling area.  Seeing his plan I yelled out to our group and they brought the hose, wet vacuum and gas can.  Old Jim just gave a little laugh, “You will need more than that little can.” Jim then pointed to the trucks telling the men to bring them over.  I walked with Jim as we grabbed to two large extension cords.  We ran the cords from the bunker to the large underground tank.  We started the vacuum which slowly began pumping gas out of the tank and had it emptying into a small waste bucket we had inside.

              Both trucks had extra tanks which were near empty and the main tanks needed some filling as well.  The basin had enough to fill both trucks up completely and the small gas can as well.  Not wanting to just leave gas in the ground Aaron brought me and Jim back down into the bunker.  After Jim opened the main door he went and tried pulling one of the massive water jugs out.  The water drum was too heavy.  He signaled me to give him a hand, but even with both of us we struggled sliding it out.  There would be no way to get the drum out of the bunker.

              “Shit!” Jim yelled as he came to the same conclusion as I did. 

              His eyes filled with light and I turned to see what he was looking at.  Once again Old Jim surprised us by dragging in a large dolly. I smiled while walking towards him.  The dolly made it possible to get the water drum outside.  Once outside Aaron brought the drum around front then asked Jim if the water was purified.  He nodded yes and Aaron yelled at the group telling them to come and drink all they could before we dumped it out and filled it with gas.  They did as instructed all extremely thirsty not having anything to drink today until now.  After everyone had their fill with great hesitation Aaron tipped the drum over whispering, “What a waste.”