One Blink From Oblivion (14 page)

              Max, without hesitation, ejects the empty clip and seats another in the rifle. Wordlessly, he turns his attention back to the hall, steps over the doctor’s limp body and continues onward.

              Brooke stands motionless behind him, staring at the biter’s fresh corpse and not believing what she just witnessed. The fact that Max had just killed an infected is not what is troubling her, the fact that he did it with such ease and conviction goes far beyond merely disconcerting. What does she really know about Max after all? Who was he before she met him? Both of those were good questions, but Brooke makes a quick decision that all she needs to know about him right now is that he’s the one saving their skins and that will have to do.

              Brooke’s attention is drawn upward when she hears a loud clatter just above her head. She tries to quicken her pace as soon as she realizes that something is about to break through, but she is too late. The ceiling panels above her crumble, and raining debris followed by the weight of an infected thrust her downward. The biter is dressed in a yellow and white horizontally striped shirt that doesn’t quite cover his sizeable gut. His hair is cut into a mullet that would be laughable under any other circumstance. He wears low riding jeans, and his large feet are completely bare.

              He lands spread eagle and hard on top of Brooke with such force that all the air instantly evacuates her lungs. She fights the urge to blackout and struggles to keep a large unbroken piece of ceiling panel between her face and that of her attacker.

              Vinny is the first to react and raises his rifle to shoot.

              “Don’t shoot!” yells Max knowing that the high velocity ammunition in Vinny’s rifle had a good chance of passing right through the infected and into Brooke.

              Max remembers the knife he salvaged from one of the downed soldiers earlier and in a moment has it clear of its scabbard. The infected thrashes about wildly trying to get around his own girth and at Brooke. Max steps in fast and straddles the biter’s back. He knows he must move quickly before the biter has a chance to change his focus to him. Max grabs the man by a swath of his hair and pulls back hard to expose his neck. Max then reaches around under the biter’s throat with the knife he wields in his right hand and plunges it deep into the soft tissue just under the man’s left ear. In one swift motion -left to right- Max has slit the man’s throat from ear to ear being sure to sever the jugular.

The volume of blood that pours forth is immense and Brooke does her best to shield herself with the ceiling panel. She shuts her eyes, closes her mouth and holds her breath. She isn’t sure if ingesting the blood of the infected can infect her but she sure as hell isn’t taking any chances. The warm fluid bathes her arms, hair and lower torso. The panel for now seems to be adequately protecting her face. She feels the heavy man still writhing above her and she knows she is not yet out of the woods. She struggles against his weight but can’t so much as budge him.

To Max’s horror he feels the biter still fighting beneath him. Any normal man would have bled-out in seconds after sustaining such a wound, but this is obviously no normal man. Max takes aim at the biter’s back in search of a path to its heart. The man’s increased size makes the location of a slot between ribs hard to discern but Max makes his best guess and drives the blade in nearly up to its hilt. Still the man thrashes at the board between him and Brooke. Seemingly controlled now only by the desire to feed, the infected has lost all fortitude for self-defense. But somehow with the ten-inch blade piercing his back and driven in at least eight inches the biter continues to live.

Max realizes that the knife must be too short to reach the man’s heart through the layers of fat and muscle that it must travel and pushes it deeper still. He presses down with all of his weight and twists the knife in hopes of drilling it into the heart of the ogre. After a final contraction the thrashing stops. The large man suddenly goes limp and lays motionless with Max panting over him.

“Get him off of me!” Brooke’s voice is muffled and not more than a whisper given the limited air she’s able to muster.

As Max grabs hold of the man’s right arm in preparation to roll him, Vinny shouts out, “I know you two are dealing with some shit right now but if don’t hurry up then we’re going to have a lot more of it coming our way!”

The beating fist of the infected and the sound of snapping two-by-fours make Vinny’s point for him and Max quickly rolls the infected to the left and hoists Brooke to her feet.

“Run!” he yells at Brooke and she’s off before he can complete his command.

The open doorway at the end of the hall seems to be reaching for her, waiting to wrap her in its relatively safe embrace. Thankfully, the room is close and she reaches it in seconds, disappearing into its darkness. In an attempt to discourage the unseen pursuers, Vinny fires blindly into the flames at the end of the hallway. Max grabs Vinny’s good shoulder and begins guiding him backward as they cover the remaining few feet to the storage room. As soon as they’ve cleared the doorway, they begin toppling aluminum shelves and machines that they’d positioned earlier on either side of the entrance. Since the freeway-man had demolished the door to the room these shelves and equipment would provide the only barrier between they and the oncoming infected. The oxygen tanks had been relocated to the closet to keep them out of the line of fire. Gilly sat near them for the same purpose.

The fire was now licking the ceiling at the other end of the hallway but that didn’t matter. Max, Brooke and Vinny were now seamed in, with a horde of infected hungry for their blood coming full boar down the hall. They all know their chances of survival are nil.

              With no time to speak Max gives a nod to Vinny and Brooke, and their eyes reflect the same sentiment as his. If they’re going to die here, then they’re taking as many of those things as possible with them.

              Max lifts his rifle and begins to unload. Brooke and Vinny follow suit and try to concentrate fire on a single infected each rather than shooting wildly into the crowd. The heart and the head are the main objectives but the wildly rapid movement of the targets is not making it easy. The infected move so quickly that it’s difficult to hit them more than once in any given spot.

              Max doesn’t get the results he’s after by aiming high and decides to change tactics and shoot for their knees in hopes of slowing their locomotion. This tactic yields better results and Vinny and Brooke follow his lead.

              In the hall, a red head drops to one knee after Max blows out her other, but still manages to pull herself along only slightly slower than before. A fast food chain employee garbed in a red and green shirt with hat to match quickly fills her place in the front of the Hall. His left arm appears to be badly burned by grease, probably inflicted when he was first attacked and turned. For some reason the infected seemed to be fairly civil to each other -aside from the incident with the freeway-man and the boy. They apparently possessed the ability to think just like anyone else, but were driven mad by their insatiable appetites.

              The biters are now at the door and the makeshift barricade offers little more than a hurdle for them. While taking multiple M4 hits to his torso the fast food employee breaks through and knocks Brooke down flat. To everyone’s amazement, he pursues her no further; instead he moves right past her en route to the closet where Gilly now lies. An ear-shattering boom fills the room and the fast food biter’s head paints the ceiling above him. The biter’s body topples to reveal Gilly sitting upright with smoking shotgun in hand. The next biter through the door takes some bullets but pushes through to Gilly only to end in a similar manner to the fast food employee.

              “It’s my blood,” gurgles Gilly, “they can only smell me!”

              Max considers this for a moment while continuing to fire at the girl with one knee. He and Brooke were just covered with the blood of the infected only moments ago. Vinny’s clothes were still blood stained from his earlier encounter with Lisa. Gilly was the only one in the room that didn’t smell like the infected and therefore the only one that smells like food to them.

              This revelation starts the wheels turning in Max’s head, but he has to be sure. The redhead reaches the door and is through in no time.

              “Don’t shoot at her just keep firing down the hall!” Max shouts to Vinny and Brooke and receives looks of confusion, but compliance of action.

              Just as the biter before her, the redhead b-lines directly for Gilly who awaits her with a fresh shotgun shell in the chamber. Once more, the loud boom from its barrel fills the room and her limp body lines up next to the one before her.

              “Get out;” yells Gilly, “I got this!”

              He follows the statement with a flick of the safety pin on his grenade, a wink and a smile in Max’s direction. Gilly then reaches into his breast pocket and retrieves a set of keys, which he tosses to Max.             

              Max feels a momentary pang of appreciation and regret in his heart when he understands Gilly’s plan.

              Max turns to Vinny and Brooke, “Get behind me!” he shouts.

They comply and line up single file. He then gives the hallway a quick check to make sure it’s clear.

              Brooke’s eyes well up with tears as she looks gratefully at Gilly and blows him a kiss. Gilly’s smile widens and he cocks the shotgun chambering its final shell.

              “Let’s do it!” exclaims Max as he scrambles over the barricade and into the hall.

Max ducks into the first room he comes to and beckons to Vinny and Brooke to do the same. As soon as they’re in he points to the blood pool on the floor from the robust biter and commences to rub more -already clotting- fluid onto his clothes. Brooke chokes back a gag and joins him, as does Vinny.

The cries of more infected charging down the hall toward Gilly make the hairs on Max’s neck stand on end and he knows it’s time to go. As soon as he hears them pass, he flies through the door with Brooke and Vinny hot on his heels. They stay low to avoid the smoke and flames and are buffeted to one side by a straggling infected on his way to dine.

             
‘Boom!!!’
the shotgun sounds for its final time and they all mentally brace themselves for what they know will come next.

              Max makes sure Brooke and Vinny are through the hole in the lobby wall before he exits. The impromptu entrance is now a gaping archway outlined with fire. They take only seconds to get free.

              Above even the cries of the infected, Gilly’s screams can be heard as they sink their teeth into his flesh. Brooke realizes that Gilly has endured this additional agony just to buy them a few moments more and again her eyes flow.

              Max rounds the building and pulls out the keys that Gilly tossed to him. He locates the door key and unlocks the Hummvy on the passenger side. He jumps in and scrambles to the Driver’s seat but not before he hears one last pain-filled scream from Gilly.

***

              Gilly holds out for as long as he can, as the infected feed from various parts of his anatomy. A smallish one has taken up residence in his lap and after reaching into Gilly’s abdomen has begun to twirl his lower intestines like spaghetti noodles around two fingers on his left hand. It drinks the blood and bile that pour forth from the quarter-sized hole near Gilly’s navel as he winds more and more of the organ through the opening.

They say that when death approaches, your life flashes before your eyes. This is not the case for Gilly, but what does come to mind is a particular spring day back home and so long ago that it had almost faded into a dream. He recalls the honey-sweet smell of tobacco leaves, golden bronze reaching to the fiery Sun above, the cool breeze whistling its gentle serenade through the dense woods that surrounded the fields where he lay. And later the fireflies will seemingly twinkle into existence just as the day’s light begins to ebb into blackest night. He wonders how his life had strayed so far from that day. That one perfect day when he hadn’t a care in the world, other than if there was enough pear preserves left for tonight’s biscuits, or if Sue May would glance down his path while on her way to school the next day. He longs for that day and just one more shy smile from Sue May.

Gilly’s vision starts to dim and he knows he can holdout no longer. He lifts the grenade to his mouth and uses his teeth to pull the pin. Gilly then releases the arming trigger and rolls the grenade closer to the oxygen tanks.

He spits the pin at the nearest biter and says, “See you fuckers later.”

The grenade erupts, filling the surrounding space with shrapnel and tearing through the oxygen tanks. In an instant, the volatile compressed oxygen reaches the flames in the hall and ignites the air throughout the clinic with a sonic boom that shatters every window and unhinges every door. Gilly –as well as all the infected around him- is vaporized in a blink, but in that blink, he has just a moment for one final thought…
‘Thank God’
.

***

Brooke and Vinny are barely in the Hummvy when the shattering glass pelts the vehicle at an incredible velocity. Brooke covers her ears and screams as her eardrums flex on the verge of bursting.

The bulletproof windshield is serving as an adequate barrier to the flying debris but Max has no intention of spending any more time in front of the clinic. The Hummvy is already reversing when the fireball envelops them. Max presses the throttle to the floor and rolls over several parking bumpers and off the street curb in an effort to escape it. Everything inside the vehicle jostles and clanks as the suspension rebounds after each successive bump.