The situation became a game of chance with time ticking away. Smith backed towards the glass doors. The tape around the doctor’s neck tightened causing him to gulp. The escape party followed, backing slowly, clustered around Smith. Finn pulled Wilde backward in the wheel chair.
“We want safe passage out of here, Podolski. We want to get back to our RV on the I-78 and we just want to carry on our journey.” Smith really wanted to finish the job properly and blow Podolski’s kneecaps out and batter his head to a pulp but he was in “retreat intact at any cost” mode. He knew Podolski would pounce on any sign of weakness and kept his eyes firmly locked onto the colonel’s. Flounder and you’re dead.
“You’re injured,” Podolski protested. “What chance have you got out there? Those creatures will tear you to bits inside thirty minutes, I guarantee.” He took a step closer.
“We’ll take our chances out there,” Eazy chipped in. “Better than with you motherfuckers in here. In fact, you’re worse than those blood sucking bastards out there.”
“You got that fucking right,” Batfish said.
Smith knew they would be lucky to all get out of this position alive. He was playing it like a poker game. How much did Podolski need the doctor or how much did he just want to prove to be boss of the situation? Smith was bluffing. He felt like shit and wouldn’t be physically able to produce much of a fight if it came down to it.
“Please let us go,” Julia begged with her hands held together and tears in her eyes.
Smith thought this was good. Maybe Podolski would capitulate with pleading from a begging woman. Podolski’s demeanor changed. His body language and eye contact wavered.
A bumping sound on the glass doors diverted the tension in the lobby. A huge male, dressed in gray mechanics coveralls, ran repeatedly, headfirst at the doors, leaving blood smears running down the glass.
“
I see a red door and I want to paint it black.”
“Shit, the perimeter is breached,” Podolski screamed. “They’re in the compound.” He waved frantically at his soldiers standing behind. “Eliminate the intruder.”
The big and small soldiers, standing by the doors activated a keypad that opened the sliding glass entrance. They stepped into the darkness and rapid fire gunshots echoed through the lobby.
“Intruder successfully eliminated,” burned through the radio signal.
Smith realized the tension had ratcheted up another notch. The soldiers were gun frisky. Zombies in the area. One zombie led to hundreds more following like a pack. Good time to go.
“Right, we’re out of here now, Podolski.”
Podolski faltered, he didn’t know what to do. He gave Smith the winning hand.
Smith yanked the doctor backwards towards the open doors. The others followed. The air was humid but refreshing as they stepped into the darkness. The big and small soldiers immediately trained their rifles at head height.
“Keys, motherfucker,” Smith demanded. He saw confusion and uncertainty in the big guy’s eyes behind the gas mask.“Keys to the vehicle.” He nodded to the troop carrier parked on the sidewalk next to the building.
The tall soldier looked to the doorway where Podolski stood.
“Let it go, Trent. We can’t take the risk,” Podolski ordered, looking nervously up and down the sidewalk.
The big soldier rummaged in his pocket and tossed a set of keys in Smith’s direction. Smith watched the keys jangle on the concrete sidewalk.
“You okay to drive, Eazy?” he said.
“God damn right, y’all,” Eazy scooped up the keys. “Let’s get the fuck out of this skull fracture. I can hear those fuckers coming.”
Moans, screams and sighs echoed from the acoustics of the airport buildings and runways. Stumbling, bloodied figures gathered in numbers and drew closer out of the blackness.
“Jesus! Just let them go,” Podolsk screamed. “They’re all over the fucking place. Let’s get back inside and defend what we have.”
“Wait, wait,” Doctor Soames yelled, gagging at the tape. “Don’t leave me with this lot.”
“Sorry Doc, you’re on your own now,” Podolski said before retreating into the building. “All you bastards are on your own. You made your choice.”
The tall and small soldiers ran inside and keyed in the code which closed the glass doors. Smith had beaten Podolsk in the mind game scenario but now had to beat the enclosing flesh eaters.
Chapter Forty
I laughed as the silly fat man tried to push me up the ramp when a load of comical zombies bit into his forearms and neck. Oh, how he screamed as his flesh was torn away by their rotten teeth. Green, putrid faces full of hunger and hate, stinking of rotten chickens, old man farts and death. I knew it wasn’t real, just a dream or a movie, or a game I was in.
Eazy opened the front doors to the troop carrier and Batfish unbolted the back doors to the interior, dimly lit by an overhead bulb. Smith ripped the taped M-16 from around Soames’ neck. He was no longer a priority. Smith now no longer gave a shit whether the well to do doctor lived or died.
“Get Wilde in the back of the truck,” Smith yelled. “Eazy, crank this bastard up. These dead fuckers are getting too close for comfort.”
Doctor Soames banged helplessly on the glass doors to the soldiers inside the building. “Let me in,” he pleaded.
“Doc, you either come with us or you’re dead out here,” Eazy barked.
Stretching, grasping hands came closer from the dark. White, hungry, scarred faces wanted flesh. They began to surround the troop carrier.
Eazy gunned the engine with Batfish next him. Julia screamed hysterically and shut the front cabin door on the three of them. Summer night rain began to pelt down rattling on the troop carrier roof.
“Come on, you guys,” Batfish yelled from the cab. “Get the fuck in. They’re all over us.”
Eazy flicked on the wiper to try and brush off a young girl with burgundy hair and a large lump of flesh missing from her cheek, hissing at them from the windshield.
Smith fired three head shots on the enclosing zombies as Finn and Rosenberg struggled to negotiate Wilde in the wheelchair up the vehicle ramp. Rosenberg pulled and Finn pushed. An outward facing back wheel stuck in the gap between the ramp and the rear structure.
“Fuck this,” Smith muttered as he stumbled backwards up the ramp. “Rosenberg, we got to go now.” He slumped onto the bench seat inside the troop carrier interior, on the verge of unconsciousness, the M-16 too heavy in his hands.
“Turn the chair around,” Rosenberg screamed as grabbing hands and black fingernails accumulated around them.
Finn could have saved himself in that split second but he chose to help Wilde. He spun the wheelchair and Rosenberg pulled it up the ramp. Finn screamed as teeth bit into his flesh from all angles. He felt chunks of skin and tissue ripping from his body. Hard, stubby fingers thrust into the gaping wounds, eager to grab handfuls of warm flesh. The last sight he saw was Brett Wilde waving him goodbye with a sedated smile on his face.
Rosenberg parked the wheel chair as far forward as possible and banged on the small, transparent window to the cab. He looked at Smith and thought he was dead.
“Go, Eazy, go,” he yelled.
At least a dozen zombies crawled up the metallic ramp. Finn was being devoured by another twenty snarling ghouls, reveling in a feeding frenzy, tearing lumps of flesh from the body, gnawing bone and sinew. Those unable to reach the corpse scooped oozing blood from the ground with their fingers and greedily sucked them dry. Eazy banged his foot on the gas and moved the transporter forward. Orange sparks fired from the metal tail gate as it scraped the concrete ground.
“
Go, Johnny, Go, Go, Go!”
The dead tumbled from the back of the carrier but four clung to the ramp and three crawled inside the interior. Rosenberg had two options, die or fight. The oldest option inherited from primeval mankind, fight or flight. No flight available, he had to fight. He’d never had a fight in his entire life unless he included Gabby Venus from junior school when he was eleven.
Gabby Venus was a cool kid from Venezuela who was good at all sports, popular with classmates, especially with the girls. Rosenberg was incensed during a games lesson when Venus insulted Janey James, (a girl he had a massive crush on) calling her a fat, useless cow due to her inability to catch the ball during a low level baseball game. Rosenberg confronted Venus after the game and threw a punch. The only punch he’d ever thrown in anger in his life. Venus took the punch responsively on the chin and then proceeded to kick Rosenberg’s ass quite severely.
He was dammed if he was going to stand by and be walked over again. It was time for him to do something. Rosenberg screamed a war cry and ran at the squat zombie enclosing on Smith on the bench seat. Smith was exhausted. He’d carried out a rescue operation of some sort with most of them in a position to escape. Now it was up to them. Smith could do no more. If he died, so be it.
Rosenberg kicked out at the squat, shaven headed zombie as it clawed Smith’s clothing, causing it to topple backwards, clawing the night air. The zombie hit the metal ramp and rolled down dislodging the grip of two more crawling up the ramp. The three living dead spilled out the back of the transporter and rolled away on the blacktop into the darkness.
Rosenberg grabbed the M-16 rifle from Smith’s hands, aimed at the two approaching zombies and pulled the trigger. The closest zombie was a blonde haired woman in a tatty pink dress. She buckled from the waist down whilst jolting backwards as the bullets ripped through her guts. She tried steadying herself as her feet reached the decline of the ramp. Her hands waved in the air like she was trying to swim back inside the transporter. Rosenberg stopped firing when another zombie clinging to the ramp, grabbed the woman’s leg to haul itself up. The woman toppled backward and fell on top of the turban wearing zombie still holding her leg. Their nails scrapped the metal as they helplessly slipped down the ramp. Rosenberg had one more zombie to deal with inside the interior and one still clinging stoically to the ramp.
Eazy turned a sharp corner causing Rosenberg and the remaining zombie to lurch unsteadily to the right side of the vehicle interior. Smith groaned when his back slammed into the side wall. The remaining zombie groaned as if in agreement, gained his balance and staggered towards Rosenberg with raised grabbing hands. Rosenberg weighed up his opponent. In life, this guy had probably been some weary middle aged businessman. He was overweight, balding and wore a once white shirt covered in streaks of days old blood. A pair of pants braces hung uselessly around his hips.
Rosenberg aimed the rifle a little higher this time and pulled the trigger. One round fired hitting the zombie squarely in the chest. Stale black blood dribbled from the wound. The shot would have killed him in his previous life but only caused a backward pace. Rosenberg tried the trigger again only to hear an exasperating clicking noise but no bullet discharge.
“Oh shit,” Rosenberg hissed. The weapon had either jammed or was out of ammo. Either way Rosenberg didn’t know how to remedy the problem. He knew nothing about firearms except which end to point at the target.
The middle aged zombie was only around six feet away. The one on the ramp was a slim, long haired woman wearing a summer evening dress. She managed to haul herself up inside the transporter and crawled on all fours towards Rosenberg, snarling like a rabid dog.
Rosenberg spun the rifle around in his hands wielding the butt end like a club. He swung and smashed it sideways into the middle aged zombie’s head. He stumbled but still kept coming. Rosenberg saw the crawling woman getting closer out of the corner of his eye. He butted the middle aged guy squarely in the face with the bottom edge of the rifle forcing him back towards the ramp. Two or three more hits would knock him out of the vehicle but the woman was fast approaching from a low angle.
“Smith? Can you help me?” Rosenberg pleaded. “I can’t fight two at once.”
Smith’s head flopped around with the movement of the vehicle and murmured something incomprehensible.
The middle aged zombie grabbed the rifle butt with both hands which halted Rosenberg’s assault. The woman’s matted hair hung around her head; bared teeth visible surrounded by the pallid, white skin of her lower face in the gloomy light. She grabbed the bottom of Rosenberg’s pants.
“Oh, Christ help me,” Rosenberg wailed.
Chapter Forty-One
Tears welled in Rosenberg’s eyes while he tried to tug the rifle away from the middle aged zombie’s grip and shuffle his feet backwards, away from the woman on the floor. He felt nails scrapping the material of his pants and on the leather of his shoes. Thoughts of dragging them both to the ramp and hurling himself out of the back of the vehicle flashed through his mind. Sacrifice yourself for the good of others. Had he heard that in church or read it in the Bible once?
He screamed in the face of the middle aged zombie as if it may shock him into submission. Rosenberg shuffled to the middle of the transporter interior attempting to keep the zombies away from Smith and Wilde for as long as possible. One of them might just recover in time to save him.
The vehicle lurched violently to the left when Eazy steered around a sharp bend, narrowly avoiding a dumpster and two stationary police cars.
Rosenberg and the two attacking zombies toppled to the floor. Smith slid off the bench and fell face first onto the deck. Wilde tumbled out of his wheel chair. The rifle flew from the grasping hands and clattered onto the metal floor.
“
Go Helter Skelter. Look out, Helter Skelter”.
Eazy nearly lost control of the vehicle as he over steered out of the turn. He spun the wheel left and right until he gained a straight course. He saw a set of chained steel gates blocking the road a few yards ahead.
“Hang on guys,” he yelled. “You may feel a little bump.” Eazy gritted his teeth and put his foot down on the gas pedal.
Rosenberg whimpered as he stood up. He didn’t know where the hell the zombies or his friends where. His head spun, his breathing was heavy. He felt close to an anxiety attack.