Earlier that morning, the day Tookes went to the propane depot, Leon Scott watched Bookbinder stride purposely down the hill.  The chill in the fall morning air made his breath visible as he walked.  He’d spent the last hour in an early morning strategy meeting with The Four.  He looked calm and in control.

“Listen up.  Colonel Bookbinder is here.  Attention!” Shouted Scott.

Nineteen men came running out of various places around the barn.  They lined up in two straight rows and stood at attention on the gravel parking lot they used as the parade ground.  Scott stood off to the side, facing the men.

“Colonel Bookbinder, Sir.  Fire teams M1, M2, M3, and M5 present,” Scott reported.  “M4 is out running a perimeter check, due back in 20 minutes,” said Bookbinder’s newly promoted Lieutenant.

“Command has need for medical supplies, communications equipment, and fuel for cooking,” said Bookbinder.

“M2, you’re on homeland patrol, so you’re sitting this out.  M1, we’re going to the police station to secure assets necessary to the mission.  M3, your mission is to take the CVS off route 29 in downtown Culpeper.  This is a hostile environment,” said Bookbinder pausing while he looked at the men assembled in front of him.

“Understood, Sir,” Said Scott.

Bookbinder nodded, “The number of infected is expected to number in the tens of thousands in Culpeper, and you’re heading right to the edge of a residential area.  Your orders are to breach the CVS, acquire medical equipment and supplies, over the counter and prescription drugs.  You are not to fire unless contact is overwhelming.  Men, this is a silent mission.  Get in and get out, no noise, no attention.  Grab the assets and go.  You leave in 5 minutes.  Do you understand?”

“Sir, yes sir!” shouted M3’s team members.

“M3, take the two explorers, grab your gear and go.  Dismissed!”

“M5, your orders are as follows.  Breach and clear the plastic surgery center on the corner of 1st and Market St.  Obtain medical equipment, including diagnostic imaging equipment that can be transported, sutures, IV bags and kits, and any drugs you can find.  We’re setting up a clinic here, so make it complete boys,” said Bookbinder.

“Sir, yes Sir,” chorused the men of M5

Bookbinder continued, “Mission parameters are the same as M3, no gunfire unless absolutely necessary.  You’re one block off the center of downtown Culpeper, the highest population density area for fifty miles.  Do not draw attention to yourselves.  Breach gently, make sure you can lock the place up securely when you leave.  We may need that clinic in the future, and we may need it fast, I don’t want to have to re-clear the building if we have a wounded man bleeding out.  Once you secure the premises, remove any corpses, and haul them away from the building.  We don’t want it to look like anyone’s been there. M5, do you understand your mission?”

“Sir, yes sir!” the members of M5 replied in unison.

“Good.  Take the Ford Dually and the white F250.  You know Tookes loves that white pickup, don’t wreck it.  M5, you leave in five minutes, dismissed!”

“M2, ready yourselves for homeland patrol.  You leave when M4 gets back.  Dismissed!”

When everyone was gone except Bookbinder’s own team, he continued with the orders.

“M1.  Our mission is two-fold.  Command has directed us to recon the state police headquarters.  They’ve also tasked us with keeping an eye out and being ready to back up any of the other teams as required.  Our mission at the headquarters is to acquire police assets, vests, weapons, ammunition, communications equipment, and vehicles.”

“Men, The Four are heading to the propane depot.  Their mission is to secure cooking fuel for Mrs. Tookes.  They’ve got the most open area, and they’re a little cocky.  We’ll need to back them up if they get in over their heads.”

“We leave in five minutes also.  Get to it men, dismissed.”

Charlie headed quickly down to his room in the grooms cottage to gather his stuff.  He’d taken the small one room cottage for himself.  He let anyone to use his bathroom at almost any time, his door was never locked.  Inside the small, cozy cottage he knelt down at his foot locker, unlocked it, and retrieved his weapons.  He almost never openly wore even a side arm on the property, both as a show of respect for the children in the area, and to show that he was confident in their safety.  He did carry a small frame 9mm handgun concealed in the rear waistband of his pants; he’d been carrying that weapon for 15 years, and just didn’t feel right without it.

He strapped on his desert camo combat vest, and slid in the armor plates.  The chest strap for his HK g3 attached to D-rings on his vest.  The H&K was .308 caliber carbine.  It was almost as powerful as the rifle Tookes called Sammie, and just as accurate at ranges out to a hundred yards.  It had a collapsible stock which allowed it to be more effective indoors and an ACOG scope for faster target acquisition.  Bookbinder carried six 20 round magazines in his combat vest plus one in the rifle, Charlie alone could handle a small horde of infected.

He walked out of his cottage ready to do violence.  His men were there waiting for him, already sitting in the explorer.  Charlie knew they’d be bringing additional vehicles home, so they were riding packed tightly for the fifteen miles up through town.

They arrived at the police station in no time, the place looked deserted.  The building itself was steel, Dalton Reineer exited the front passenger side of the vehicle and advanced on the 8 foot chain link and barbed wire fence.  He pulled a large pair of collapsible bolt cutters from his pack and unfolded the handles out to their full twenty-four inches.  These cutters were military issue, and easily cut through the padlock that was holding the fence closed.

Reineer removed the chain, looped it through one side of the fence and opened the gate, motioning Hostetler to drive through.  On the way to the police station, they’d discussed entry points, it seemed most logical to breach through the back door near the giant roll up doors.  There were a dozen police cars parked inside the chain link fence; two of them were explorers with full bull bars and inside prisoner cages.

The team approached the rear door in a formation that they’d practiced in the yard on Charlie’s cabin door a hundred times.  Hostetler, Reineer, and Garrett on the handle side, Johnson on the hinge side.  Charlie stepped forward with a large Halligan style pry-bar.  He drove the forked end into the crack between the latch and the frame, and pried out and right, sending the door flying open to the left.

Johnson caught the door, giving Charlie room to step to the side between Hostetler and Reineer to recover from the prying outside the line of fire from the room.  Hostetler and Reineer stepped forward as Charlie was stepping between them in a well choreographed dance.  Charlie holstered the Halligan and shouldered his rifle.  The two underlings cleared the entry way.  They started way back from the door, taking small sections of the room.  They stepped up, each step towards the doorway giving them a larger view into the room.  They knelt on either side of the door, as Charlie stepped through to clear the blind corner just inside the door.

“Well done boys, that was textbook.  Keep your wits about you.  Garrett, tell me what you sense.”

“Nothing has been in this room in a long time.  No tracks in the dust.  I don’t hear anything walking around, Sir,” said Garrett.

“And what else Johnson?” Bookbinder quizzed the men.  He never missed an opportunity to drive home their training.

“I don’t see anything moving through the windows.  I think we’re good.”

“Dammit Johnson, use your nose.”

“I can’t smell anything.  My nose is stuffy,” replied Johnson.

“You should quit smoking, it kills your senses.  Would you smoke if it clouded your vision?” He asked again.

“Yes, Sir.” Said Johnson, “I mean no Sir—I mean, I should quit, Sir.  I would not smoke if it clouded my vision, Sir.”

“Alright,” Bookbinder said.  “I smell rotten meat.  I smell stupid zombies in here.  They’re not in this room, if they were that smell would have assaulted our noses, but they’re in here somewhere.”

Once the lesson was over they moved as a unit through the building clearing room by room.  After the first room when it became clear that the building wasn’t full of infected, Charlie let his rifle hang and once again drew the halligan.

They’d come in via the police entrance, not the front door of the building.  Charlie opened the door to the hallway and took a long smell.  The stench of months old flesh was stronger in the hallway.  Five steps down the hallway there were doors on the right and left.  Charlie held up two fingers, and then pointed to Reineer and himself.  He pointed to Dalton, Hostetler, and Johnson and pointed at the door across the hallway.

The team split into two groups and on Charlie’s mark each quietly turned the knob and opened their door.  Charlie stepped into the gloomy room to see a corpse in a police uniform turn its head towards him.  It was wearing glasses and still had its patrolman’s hat on.  Its eyes locked on to him.  They were milky and white but the hunger stood out in them.  The creature walked forward into its desk and fell face-first onto a pile of folders.  With the zombie bent over the desk like that, Charlie quickly closed the distance and lodged his halligan into its brain.

Reineer pulled an old office chair away and sent it rolling over towards a giant metal book case that ran the length of the side wall.  The mostly empty shelves were painted the same beige color as everything else in the building.  A few trophies, a couple awards and a family picture were the only things on the first half; Charlie noted a small selection of paperbacks filling about half of a single shelf towards the end of the room.

The two of them laid the patrolman down on the blue carpet-tiled floor and went to work.  Reineer removed the utility belt from the officer, putting a Kimber 1911 frame .45 caliber pistol and four magazines into his backpack.  Next he removed a pair of handcuffs from the rear pouch, and slid a Maglite and collapsible baton off the belt, still in their holsters.  The flashlight, and baton and hand gun holster went into his pack.

Charlie poked its stomach with his finger.

“Cheap body armor.  This is the everyday wear stuff; it’ll stop a three-eighty, but won’t do anything for seven-six-two.  Plus, it’s unlikely we’ll ever get the smell out.”  Go check on the others, I’ll poke around here and see if there’s anything useful.

When Reineer was gone, Bookbinder set to work checking the man’s pockets.  He found a set of keys in the front pocket.  The keychain said “World’s Greatest Dad”, and it held a house key and two car keys, one for a Toyota and one for a Chevrolet.  Two keys were for Master Lock padlocks, and the last key was to his handcuffs.

Charlie rolled the corpse over, removed the officer’s drivers license from his wallet, inserting it into his back pocket without even glancing at it.

Bookbinder stood up and walked into the hall.  The rest of the team was there, ready to move on.  “Be sure to take their keys, and get their driver’s licenses.  LEO’s often have sizable gun collections at home,” he said, using the common military slang for law enforcement officers.

There were three other doors in the hall, two other doors on the right led to empty restrooms.  The third door at the end of the hall had long, narrow vertical glass windows, embedded with chicken wire.

“That door up there will lead to the common area.  We’re likely to see greater numbers of infected up there.  Stay sharp, stay focused.  Hand to hand wherever possible.  Move forward on my signal.”

Bookbinder moved swiftly and silently, pressed against the wall until he was at the door.  He peered through the window, exposing as little of himself as possible to anything that may be on the other side.

The room on the other side of the doors was the main lobby of the state police barracks.  It took Bookbinder almost a full minute to count the walkers in there.  They were all in a pack in the center of the room, facing inward.  Men and women, inThe pack was, as a whole, swaying gently side to side.  Each zombie had their arms spread, resting on the shoulder of the corpse beside them, their heads down, tucked into the smallest space possible.  Charlie waved to his man to stay back, and then crept back to them, pulling them backwards to the first room.

“Alright, I counted fifty-two in the lobby.  They’re huddled together in a tight group, standing in the middle of the room.  There are two seating areas under the big windows in the front, but other than that, the room is mostly empty.  I couldn’t see anything to the left, but I think that’s where the receptionist would be, probably behind some bullet proof glass.”

The four men with Charlie looked afraid.  This was a major operation, bigger than anything they had experienced yet.

“We won’t let you down, Sir,” said Dalton quietly.

“Son, I’m not the least bit worried about that.  We all keep our heads and remember our training; we’re going to walk out of this place feeling unstoppable.  Here’s the plan.”

Charlie laid out the plan to the group.  When everyone understood, the five of them cleared the rest of the building, leaving the huddle until the end.  They moved as a unit, encountering only two undead, both of them dispatched via halligan soundlessly.  When they got to the last room of the second hallway, Bookbinder pulled the men together.

“Alright, silence from here out.” Charlie whispered.  “This is the room where the receptionists sat.  The end of this room has thick bullet proof glass, with a hole cut out for speaking through.  The three of you stay here.  Creep up on that glass, on your bellies if you have to, do not let them see you.”

Garrett, Hostetler, and Johnson nodded their understanding.

When you hear Reineer and I firing, open fire through the speaking ports in that huge window.  When they’re all down, Reineer and I will step in and finish any with our halligans, you three stay in your position and give us some cover.

Reineer and Bookbinder backtracked down the empty hallways to the first set of double doors, creeping the last ten feet sliding along the wall.  The doors opened into the big room by a breaker bar.  Bookbinder held up three fingers and pantomimed kicking the breaker bar.

Reineer nodded his acknowledgement and both men put their earplugs in.  Bookbinder started the countdown.  One finger, two fingers, and on the third finger, both men kicked the doors open and opened fire.  Bookbinder thumbed his weapon to single shot, and aimed each bullet through the ACOG scope.  That scope was designed to be fired with both eyes open, allowing him to acquire targets much faster than with a regular scope.

Reineer opened up on full auto, cutting the zombies down.  According to their training, the four men with Bookbinder were to lay down rotating heavy suppression fire.  Zombies had no fear, but if you put enough bullets into their spine, they did lose the ability to stand upright.  A slow dragger was easier to handle than a walker.  That bought time for Bookbinder to pick them off one by one with headshots.

At the end of the firing, the room was filled with the smell of gun smoke, and the cluster of zombies was dead, shredded from the volume of bullets pumped into them.  At the sound of the doors being kicked open, they wheeled around to be met a hail of bullets.  Bookbinder only missed one shot, but silently chided himself for wasting that one bullet.

“Great work, men.  You’ve earned your combat stripes today,” said Charlie.  “Let’s meet back at the first room”

When the other three arrived in the first room, Bookbinder handed out the orders for the second part of the mission.  “Garrett, Hostetler, make your way to the roof, and see how hard it will be to remove the radio tower, then report back.  Reineer, you’re with me, we’re going looking for keys, guns, ammo, and vests.”

“What about me, sir?”

“Johnson, you’re on corpse duty.  Glove up and search those bodies out there.  Haul the corpses from in here out to the lobby.”

“Yes, Sir,” replied Johnson, somewhat less than enthusiastically.

“Yes Sir!” the other men said, as they all went their separate ways inside the building.  Charlie knew that the door to the garage was in the next room over.  He’d had to breach the door with the halligan the first time through; whichever officer had the keys decided not to leave them on a hook for him right by the door.  This time the door swung easily open, and led them into the garage where the SWAT truck was parked.

“Reineer, find the keys to this van please.  You might check with Johnson in a few minutes to see if he’s found them,” Bookbinder ordered.

Reineer started searching the garage for the keys while Bookbinder headed for the weapons locker on the far side of the room.  Bookbinder’s halligan made quick work of the lock on the arms locker and he stepped into the walk-in closet sized police arsenal.  Charlie’s eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas morning when he entered the locker.  Along one of the walls were rows of rifles and shotguns.  The other long wall was all handguns, with 30 Heckler-Koch g36K assault rifles standing in racks along the middle.  The same gun that Bookbinder himself carried.  These super short barrel folding stock assault rifles were perfect for close quarters combat.  They were designed for short range accuracy, and substantial rate of fire.  At the back was the ammunition locker, which was unlocked.  Inside it held 8500 rounds of 5.52×49 ammunition for the assault rifles, various rounds for the shotguns and rifles, including nearly 2000 double-ought buck shot.

Bookbinder left the weapons cage and went to find a cart to load this on in the event that Reineer was unable to find the keys to the swat truck.  On the way by the truck Bookbinder looked in the window, and saw the keys hanging in the ignition.

“Reineer!” Bookbinder yelled, a grin on his face.

Dalton Reineer came running in, “Yes sir?” he said, skidding to a halt.

“The keys are in the ignition.  Don’t overlook the obvious,” Bookbinder said, clapping the man on the back.

“Sorry sir.  I found keys to a bunch of vehicles outside too.”

“Nice work then.  Help me load the armory into this thing.  I want the central racks too, and every round of ammunition in the cage.  Load and save four of the HK’s and four extra mags for each.  I’m going to sweet the perimeter and check on Johnson on corpse duty.”

Bookbinder walked out of the garage, back through the lobby of the police station.  The door leading outside was standing open.  Bookbinder saw Johnson with his weapon drawn, crouched behind a car.  The only reason he’d take cover would be if someone had a gun.  That meant humans.

Bookbinder shouldered his H&K, and started edging out the door until he could see what Johnson was looking at.  Frye and six of his men had pulled up in two Humvees and were mounting their .50 caliber on the turret.

“Frye,” Charlie called out in his best command voice.  “We have you outgunned and out-manned!  You have no cover, and we have superior weapons.  Stand down.”  This was not a suggestion, it was an order.

“Charlie? Is that you?  Come outside and let’s talk.”

“Stand down Colonel.  Weapons down.  I will fire.”

“Ok Charlie.  We’re at ease.  Come on out.”

“Johnson!  We clear?”

“Clear Sir.  I have Frye.”

Charlie walked out, watching 1 eye through the ACOG scope, the other focusing on targets.  If any of them moved, it would be their last move.  Charlie walked in a near crouch, sideways to present the smallest target, keeping Frye in his sights.

“What are you thinking? We’re on the same side here,” said Bookbinder.

“We didn’t know who you were, we were just protecting ourselves,” he replied calmly.

“Johnson, did you discharge your weapon?”

“No sir, your orders were last resort only.  When I saw Frye’s men watching us from the road across that field, I waved to them.  At that, they mounted up and came at me weapons hot.  Seeing as I was by myself out here, I thought it wise to find cover.  That’s when you came out.”

“Frye, get in your truck.  Turn around, and go back to your base.  If you approach another of my men with weapons drawn, they have orders to fire.” Bookbinder ordered. “Johnson, did you hear that?”

“Sir, yes sir. Fire at will.” replied Johnson.

“Go now Frye.  You may come by the farm tomorrow at noon if you’d like to discuss this incident with my command.  Do not make the mistake of spying on us again.”  Charlie backed away from the fence as Frye and his men got in their truck, backed out of the spot and took off.

“Garrett, Hostetler, stand down!” Bookbinder called without turning towards the building.

“Sir, yes sir.” Garrett and Hostetler stood up from their prone positions on the roof.

“What’s the situation up there boys?”

“Radio amplifier and broadcast antenna are disassembled, ready to be lowered down, sir.”

“Nice work fellas.  Really top notch work here today,” replied Bookbinder.

“Johnson, did you see anything else out of the ordinary?”

“Sir, we had attracted a few zombies, 10 or 15 standing at the fence.  No real worry, none were near the gate or making any move to go.  About 10 minutes before I saw Frye, they turned their heads and started walking off that way.”

“That’s the propane depot,” replied Bookbinder.

“Men! Double time!” yelled Bookbinder, running inside to grab the swat truck.  Frye showing up, zombies heading towards Tookes and crew.  His soldiers sense told him something was wrong.  A few seconds after that, he heard Tookes’ voice in his head say “There are 200 more coming, and maybe more behind that.  I suggest we go to weapons and end this.”

Bookbinder broke into a run, heading for the swat truck.  When he got there, Johnson right on his heels, Dalton Reineer was just finishing loading all of the weapons, ammo, and racks into the truck.  Bookbinder hit the garage door opener, hopped in and started the engine.  He backed it three quarters of the way out of the garage bay and put the truck in park.  He climbed up the ladder on the back of the truck as Garrett handed him the first piece of the antenna assembly.  Bookbinder then it handed down to Johnson on the ground.  They handed the six pieces of the assembly off the roof, then Hostetler and Garrett jumped down onto the roof of the truck.   Reineer backed out of the shop with them on the roof, when they passed the Explorer they came in, he stopped the truck so they could jump off the roof.

They parked about a hundred yards from the propane depot.  While they were jogging towards the gate, they heard a big truck engine roar to life.  They passed a huge group of zombies, maybe 1000 or more coming from way off in a field below the depot. They crossed the last few yards to the propane depot and saw the four of them, the group they called “Command” lined up like a group of super heroes making their last stand.

Leo was a joy to watch.  Marshall was fearless, wading into groups of zombies, keeping them at bay with those massive hammers he carried.  John was the best gunman Bookbinder had ever seen, and of course Tookes.  Charlie hadn’t quite figured out how Tookes was still alive, but he’d gotten the best of Watley and the best of that teleporting zombie at the battle on the front lawn, so he had to have something.  He was a good leader and Bookbinder respected him.

M1 advanced in the sideways crouch that they’d practiced.  They walked in a straight line.  At twenty five yards they took aim and fired. From then it was just aim, fire, aim, fire.  They killed all the zombies before they made it up to Tookes’ team.

“There are at least a thousand more that all turned their heads this way right before we heard that first engine start up.  We need to get out of here,” said Bookbinder, noting they had both big trucks running now.

End of the Sample

If you enjoyed the sample and would like to continue reading, What Zombies Fear: The Maxists is for sale ($2.99) on Amazon

We loaded up in the trucks, Bookbinder and his crew in the swat van, Marshall in the disgusting rotting flesh propane truck, Leo in the other.  John drove the pickup truck full of equipment, and I led the way in the yellow jeep, and headed for home.

We drove slowly through town; I wanted to get a feel for how things were in Culpeper.  There were occasional pockets of undead, and as we passed, they would look up and start shambling our way.  We watched behind us, for the most part they stopped coming after us when we were half a mile or so ahead of them.  That was good to know, I was slightly worried they’d follow us all the way to our house.

On two occasions, the undead were blocking the road.  Both groups were around a dozen in a tight pack, walking down the middle of the road.  It was interesting to watch them, they seemed to mostly stick to the roads or sidewalks.  It was very seldom that they went through yards or grass, unless they were directly chasing something to eat.  Maybe the pavement was easier walking, I don’t know.  We were trying to save ammunition, and since we had both teams together, we were killing them with hand to hand weapons.  I was pretty confident in my “charge, sidestep, hatchet to the head” technique.

The stupid zombies never did anything differently.  They had one attack plan.  They walked towards you, grabbed at you, whatever part of you protruded or they could first get their hands on.  Last they tried to get their teeth into you.

Marshall, on the other hand, had adopted a smash and smash technique.  He smashed their hands with one hammer and then came across the temple with the other.  The corpses he left with his short handled sledge hammers all looked the same.  Mangled arms, smashed temple.

Leo of course was a dervish, she bobbed and wheeled around, slicing with her short swords, she seldom killed with a single strike, but she also seldom fought a single zombie.  She preferred to take them on in groups, whittling then down slice by slice as she weaved in between them.  John had collected all of the knives he found in the warehouse, just cheap case knives, but he could throw them from fifty feet or one foot away and put them in a zombie’s eye.  He worked the hardest to maintain the slightest distance, I’m sure he was deadly in close quarters, but he liked to have some room to work.

The surprise of the day was Bookbinder.  He moved with grace like Leo, and strength like Marshall.  He used a machete and a tire knocker, which looked a lot like a small wooden bat.  This small club was about 18 inches long and solid oak.  Charlie used it to steer the zombies, lining them up, controlling them.

On more than one occasion I watched him jam the miniature club in the mouth of a corpse and drive it to the ground, following that up with a quick thrust from his machete, which he’d ground to a point, instead of the usual rounded tip.  He was a normal, unaltered, every day human, but he was every bit a lifetime, career warrior.  All of my advantages, being able to read auras and being able to consider and see my opponent’s next move make me probably equal to Bookbinders natural combat prowess

Almost all of M1 carried the same weapons combination, and all of them fought with the same style, clearly Charlie had been training them.  Control first, kill second.  They all used their club as a blocking, driving almost shield like weapon.  On more than one occasion I saw them jam it in the mouth of a zombie at the last moment, saving their arm or a comrade’s arm from a bite.  These men were not immune, or if they were they didn’t know it, and yet they fought with the same fierceness, almost abandon with which the four of us did.

We stopped at the gas station before leaving town.  They had gasoline tanks buried in the front of the store; this was one of those mega convenience stores with 30 gas pumps and 10 diesel pumps.

“I just want to see what they have for now; we’re going to have to make another run out here.” I said.  “But first I’d like to figure out some way to store a large quantity of gasoline back at the farm.  I don’t want to have to make trips out here every couple of days.  And I don’t trust that others won’t either take all the gas or wreck it so no one can use it.  Let’s take an inventory of what’s here, I’ll be right back.”

The front doors of the convenience store had been blown apart, maybe by shotgun blasts or maybe from a vehicle, it was hard to tell from the mangled mess.  I stepped through the doorway crunching on broken glass.  Just inside the doors was a zombie with an ornately carved African looking short spear sticking out of its head.  On my way by, I yanked the spear free, and walked down the aisles carrying it like a walking stick. In the 2nd to last isle, I found what I was looking for, the M&M’s.  Max loved M&M’s.  He’d be thrilled to have some.  I took every bag of every flavor M&M, emptying the boxes of candy into my backpack.

I opened the refrigerator, and took a diet Mountain Dew off the rack.  It was hot.  Not just not cold, but hot.  I grabbed 3 more and added them to the top of the pack, before returning to the front of the store.  Behind the cash register, I grabbed three cartons of cigarettes, filling the rest of my pack with every flavor of menthol cigarette left on the shelves.  I walked back out in the late afternoon sun to see Marshall and John talking animatedly.

“Hey guys, what’s up?” I asked.

“Marshall says there’s ten thousand gallons of fuel here, across the 3 grades of gasoline you blokes have.  I don’t see how he gets to that number, by my calculations, there’s 38,000 liters.”

“John, that’s 10,038 gallons.” I said after a second’s calculation.  I grinned “We’re in America, use imperial measurements, the metric system is flawed.”

“Don’t make me beat you within 2.54 centimeters of ya life.” He replied with a smirk.

We all laughed, and we loaded back up in the trucks.

At the edge of the business section of town was the library.  It had been built only a few years before, during the housing boom of the early 2000’s, when tax revenue was high and the town felt like it had all the money in the world.  They’d spent $16 million dollars on that library, something that had disgusted me at the time.  Now I was grateful that it was there.  A huge 3 story stone building with triple pane UV protected bullet proof glass, surrounded by giant stone planters with huge trees growing in them.  The stone planters were big enough to stop a large truck, modeling the architecture of post 9/11 Washington DC.  The knowledge of mankind was safe in that building, and there it would stay, in the most protected place, until we were ready to go retrieve it.

The outside of Culpeper was ringed by residential neighborhoods. When the town had living people in it, the locals knew to cut through one neighborhood to get from the main road through town over to Route 15.  That route was my habit, and I instinctively turned into the neighborhood that day.  We were almost through that neighborhood when I heard a blood curdling scream.

Simultaneously all of the trucks came to a halt.  I grabbed my new spear as Leo and I dismounted the jeep and ran a hundred yards to see a man in shorts and a tee shirt get tackled to the ground.  He was screaming, trying to get away from what was left of a woman.  Six months ago she would have been a reasonably attractive girl.  She was wearing little tiny shorts that said PINK across her ass.  The pink shorts were stained brown, and she had a little bit of a white tee shirt left on.  Most of the shirt had been ripped away at some point, exposing her from the neck down.  Almost all the flesh was missing from her neck down, the bones of her rib cage shone in the last of the daylight.  Based on the amount of missing flesh around her midsection, I would say she’d been turned by several zombies feasting on her.  The tee shirt neck was still intact, and one sleeve.  The rest of it hung down her back, like a cape covered in dried blood.

We ducked back around the corner of large house with pale blue siding.  I stopped behind some prickly bushes, to take stock of the scene.

Leo started to charge in, but I grabbed her hand and stopped her.  Something didn’t seem right.  I quickly studied the scene.  There were no weapons on the ground nearby; the man had no back pack on.  ”Who would be smart enough to survive this long, and then leave the house without weapons or a pack?” I whispered to Leo.  ”Something is wrong.”

“He could have dropped them when he ran,” she said softly.  “He could have lost them.  He could have been asleep and they surprised him.”

“Sure, but something doesn’t feel right.  Do you feel it?” I whispered

“No, I see a man that needs help,” she whispered fiercely.

“Leo, he was dead the minute he got tackled.  There’s nothing we can do now except put him out of his misery.  This is wrong.  My gut tells me something is wrong.”

Into the throat mic, I whispered “Bookbinder, check out our position, head around behind the house, there’s something wrong here.  Have John and Marshall move up past the yellow house to our left, but circle over a block before coming up this way.”

Leo and I stood there, transfixed by the man’s screams.  ”Help!” He yelled as I poked my head around the corner “My name is Andrew Zione, Help!  I’m humaaa”.  His cries left off into a gurgle of screams as the zombie bit into his crotch, ripping meat from the inside of his leg, I could hear its teeth scraping Andrew’s thigh bone.

The thing pulled its head away dragging tendons with it like floss between the festering corpses teeth, blood spurted from Andrew’s leg wound.  The zombie chewed twice and swallowed the hunk of thigh meat.  The next bite the zombie took was Andrew’s manhood, ripping it away from his body, chewing slowly.  The screams raised several octaves and became louder, as the zombie dove in for a third bite, peeling the flesh away from his belly, allowing Andrew’s guts to slide out like links of raw sausage onto the grass.

“Fuck, how is he still alive?” I said.  The screams still haunt me.

“Vic, I… We… We can’t… This can’t go on.” Leo stammered.

“Leo, there’s something very wrong.  This is a setup, I can feel it.”

I considered running in there, a shadow shot out from my body.  When shadow-me got two feet from Andrew’s decimated body it’s head exploded, and it fell over sideways.

“There’s a sniper somewhere.” I whispered into the mic.

“Sir, M1 is breaching the houses to the south.  Marshall and John are heading around to the north.  We’ll find it.”

I tried to speak quietly using my subspace voice, focused entirely on John’s aura in my mind, attempting to speak only to him. “John, there’s a sniper that’s got us pinned here.  I can’t see him.  We can’t move.  Find him and take it out.”

“Leo, did you hear me just then?”

“I didn’t hear a thing.”

“Yes, I was trying to talk directly to John.  I hope he heard me.”

Andrew kept screaming.  This girl was definitely being controlled by something, I’ve only seen a few zombie attacks like this one, mostly on that first day, but those zombies were ravenous, they bit and ate whatever parts came near their mouths.   These bites are being chosen to inflict the maximum pain without killing the victim.  The zombie girl moved upwards, leaving a trail of his guts lying on the grass.  She sat on his chest and took a bite of Andrew’s face, ripping his nose off.  Fresh blood spattered the ghoul’s face, as she sat up and slowly chewed, looking directly at us.  Andrew’s screams became wet, gurgling moans of pain.  He was writhing under her, but her knees held his arms pinned securely.

The rancid corpse turned around and put her ass on Andrews face as she reached into his belly and pulled out a rope of thick slimy guts.  I’d swear she looked directly at me and smiled before she bit his intestine in half.  Stinking bile, so strong we could smell it from our spot hiding under a bush leaked out of the intestine, down her chin, dripping into the man’s stomach cavity.

Andrew’s moans became quieter, muffled when the zombie sat down on his face, smothering his anguished cries.  Almost all of the undead we’d encountered had shit themselves, and of course they’d never bothered to clean up the natural release at death.  At least Andrew had no nose with which to smell the 6 month old rotting feces covered ass that was smothering him to death while the zombie ate his guts.  Finally the muffled moaning stopped completely.

At last, we heard a shot ring out from the south, followed by Bookbinder’s voice on the radio “Sniper terminated.  All clear sir.”

I stepped around the corner of the house, sig in my hand ready to put both corpses out of their misery.  When I get in sight of the bloody mess on the ground, there are no zombies to be found.  No footprints in the grass, no blood trail, no nothing.  Just a bloody, mashed down spot in the long grass, and a bit of intestine lying on the lawn.

“What the fuck?” I swore to myself.

Leo sobbed into my shoulder.  The horror of what we just saw was too much for even the tough Spartan woman.  I turned and hugged her tightly for a moment before we walked back to the jeep.

The ride home was quiet.  We saw no more zombies as we sped down the highway, paying no attention to the speed limit signs we passed.  It wasn’t likely we’d ever pass another car.

We spotted a herd of nine deer off to the side of the road.  In the rear view mirror I saw John point his pistol out the side of the truck he was driving.  As he did, I slowed the jeep.  He fired two shots, and two deer dropped over sideways where the stood.  The jeep bounced easily over the edge of the road and down a small bank.  The rest of the crew kept going the last two miles to the house as I pulled up to the two dead deer.

“Help me load these.” I said, hopping out the driver’s side of the jeep.

Leo stepped down off the other side, and said “Poor deer, never had a chance.  At least when I hunt I give them a sporting chance, I run them down.”

“Leo, these deer died to feed us.  They were never afraid, they never felt anything.  I’m grateful for the meat.  There is no sport in you running down a buck.  You can run 100 times faster than it can.” I chided.

Leo looked hurt, her face scrunched into a frown.  I stepped towards her, wrapping her in my arms.

“I’m sorry darlin’. I’m a little out of sorts from watching that guy Andrew, but I couldn’t risk your life for him, he was infected by the time we saw him.  I couldn’t risk you.  What if that sniper had been as good at shooting as John?  What if he shot you? I buried my head in her shoulder, and hugged her for a long time.

We loaded the two carcasses up on the hood of the Jeep, and headed for home.  It had been a long day, I was tired, and I still had to find out how The CVS and Clinic raids went, dress and process these two deer, and find some time to be a father to my little boy, who I missed very much at that moment.

Bookbinder met us coming down the drive way when we were halfway up the hill.  We filled him in on the encounter with Frye while we walked up to the house.

“Sir, may I speak freely?”

“Of course you can, you can always speak freely around me Charlie,” I said.

“I’m not sure that was a good idea, he represents a significant asset to us, if we are allies.”  It was odd for Charlie to question me.  I liked that he was feeling free to do so, but it was very out of character for him.

“Charlie.  He has to have known about that horde for days.  We know he’s been watching this place.  I know he’s been studying us.  Hell, he watched me at the high school, listened to our radio conversation, and didn’t lift a finger to help.”

I pulled a notebook and pen out of my shirt pocket, and jotted down some ideas as I filled the others in on what we needed.

“We’re low on every type of fuel.  In Culpeper there’s a propane distribution plant.  It’s the priority, we need propane today.  We just used up the last of our diesel, but we don’t technically need diesel for a couple of days.  Least important of the top priorities, we’re going to need some gasoline,” I said.

“That doesn’t seem impossible,” said Charlie.

“Oh, there’s always more,” I said.  “After we fill up all the fuel tanks, then we head across town.”

Charlie started writing notes on his own pad as I continued, “On the north side of Culpeper there is a tractor trailer repair facility.  It must be a hundred thousand square feet, you can’t miss it.  It’s a gigantic steel building with somewhere around fifteen repair bays.  That building is going to be full of tools and supplies.  I know for a fact they have a tow truck with tools to do roadside repairs on big rigs.  Then, if they can’t fix them on the road they can tow them back to the shop.  I’m pretty sure there we can find supplies to fix the tires of the plow rig down on the highway.  It’s got at least 4 blown tires.”

“Do we really want to fix that one? We could just get a new one,” said Marshall.

“It seems easier to strip the wheels off another truck, and I like that one.  I’d like to beef it up a little, build some protection for the tires and driver, but that truck is already halfway there.  Seems silly to start over and have to source a new plow, and new frame.”

“Got it.  Vic likes the old beat up truck that almost got him killed,” Marshall said.

Ignoring that last barb, I continued, “The third objective is to secure any medical equipment and supplies we can find.  I’m not ready to go to the hospital yet, but there is a plastic surgery center in town, and several drug stores.  We’re going to need antibiotics and pain meds, but we’re also going to need cough syrup, aspirin, band aids, splints, and casts. I want to clean one of those places out too.”

“We’re gonna have a lot of competition for places like that from groups of survivors, mate.  Do we know if there are any other groups, besides Frye?” Asked John.

“I don’t know about any other groups, but I’d assume there are.  Maybe at some point we leave a message somewhere with how to contact us,” said Leo.

“That’s a good idea Leo.  Maybe we could leave a radio and a note behind or something.  If you need medical attention, go to the top of cedar mountain and broadcast at noon on channel 12,” or something like that.”

“I think it’s something to consider,” she replied.

“Charlie,” I continued.  “Regarding the medical equipment I’d like you to take charge of delegating to fire teams as you see fit.  I’d like you to personally oversee the big rig repair facility, while the four of us go after the propane.  The propane facility is half a mile from a minimum security prison; I’m worried about the number of zombies that could be in that facility.  Without power holding the doors shut, it wouldn’t be too hard to get out of there.  Plus securing that propane facility means we’ll be able to maintain ourselves throughout the winter, while we refit the property with wood stoves and repair the fireplaces.  Two hundred years of progress since this house was built, and we’re going back to the beginning.”

Charlie delegated M3; Leon Scott, Adam Jacobsen, Scott Humphries, Mark Shoenfeld, and Gary Burbank to the CVS, and M5; Shannon Johnson, Gordon Baker, Andrew Gallard, John Grieco, Kenneth Leuty to the plastic surgery center.  M5 was to take the f350 crew cab dually, and M3 was assigned a pair of Ford Explorers.

“Charlie, tell me about Leon Scott and the two guys leading M5” I asked, wanting to get to know the men a little bit.

“Leon is average height, about 5’10”.  He’s strong, and in good physical shape.  He has 5 years active military, and 2 years in the reserves.  He’s been training his team pretty hard, they’re really coming together.  I need them to get some field experience.  The CVS should be relatively free of undead, and there are several ways in and out of the parking lot.”

“Good call there, Charlie.  That’s why you’re a great leader,” I said.

“Shannon Johnson is young; he was almost finished at the academy to be a state trooper when all this went down.  He knows his way around a weapon, and is a good, smart kid.  I put Gordon Baker with him because Baker has 32 years experience as a law enforcement officer.  He was a sergeant in the state police, when he retired.  Anyone with that much time in law enforcement that’s only a sergeant either did something crooked or got in some sort of trouble.”

“Can we trust baker?  Do we trust someone with a crooked past?” I asked.

“He’s a good man, but I think Shannon is the one to be making quick decisions.  Baker is there to offer guidance and temper him.  They also need some operational experience.  Baker is in good shape, and can still outrun half the people here, so he’s got some discipline.”

“How long until the fire teams are ready to roll?” Marshall asked.

“They’re gearing up now.  They were on rotation to go out house clearing today.  If we didn’t have any other orders, we were going by standing orders, secure useful items, keep food coming in, keep training.”

“Ok, how about your team?  We’re going to be spread out throughout the town.  I have a special assignment for your team.”

“We can be ready in 5 minutes, Sir, anytime, anywhere.  What are your orders?”

“I want you and your men to check out the State Police Barracks.  This is a recon mission only, do not engage any hostiles, enter only if the area is clear and secure.  I want their armory, I want their communications equipment, the FM transmitter on their roof plus all the radios in their cars, I want vests and automatic weapons, and I want their SWAT truck.  Your secondary mission is to provide backup to m3 or m5 as quickly as possible.” I said

“As I see it,” I continued, changing the topic. “We have at least 2 major players in the area.  I’m not certain about Frye; he could be up to anything, so I’m looking for any information on him, what he’s doing, where he’s going, and how many people he has.”

“Do you think he’d attack us?” Asked Bookbinder.

“I’m not sure.  I’m not sure we have anything he needs, and I don’t think he’s bloodthirsty, just slightly underhanded.  I’m pretty certain I pissed him off though.”

“You have a knack for that, ya dink,” said John with a grin.

“Secondly, I believe a smart zombie had to have organized that huge horde of walkers we killed.  If there is, he’s going to be pissed,” I said.

“Once again,” started John.

I cut him off, before he could call me a ‘dink’ or a ‘drongo’ again.  I think a ‘drongo’ is worse than a ‘dink,’ but I still haven’t quite nailed it down.  “It’s now 9:30, the four of us will be ready to roll in an hour.  I’d like for you, M1, M3, and M5 to roll before 10:00, so in case any of you need backup we can swing by on our way in,” I said to a nodding Charlie.  “Stay in radio contact, and try to conserve ammo.  We’re getting low again unless you score something pretty major at the state police barracks, we need to stay fast and stay quiet, escaping attention.”

Charlie and I stood up, and the rest of the table followed.  We shook hands, and Charlie left quickly with the mission notes we’d scribbled.  He was a good man, I’m not sure I could handle all the details that he deals with.

The four of us left to go gather our gear.  Bookbinder had his teams on constant alert.  We were slightly more lax up here in the main house, something we should probably learn from him.  It took me five minutes just to find clean socks.  Soon after that I was geared up and ready.   It took just over fifteen minutes.  I rationalized that by telling myself if life depended on speed, I could wear dirty socks.

Since I had a few minutes, I used a few to play with Max, it was likely that I wouldn’t see him until after bedtime, and I cherished my Max time.  Today we worked on a puzzle with characters from the movie Cars, and then played with his Buzz Lightyear and Woody action figures.

“Daddy, I love you.  If you see the army man again today, you shouldn’t talk to him.  He’s very mad.  Why’s he so mad?”

“Well, he wasn’t honest with me, he lied.  I believe he tried to hurt me, so I punched him in the nose,” I said plainly.

“Daddy, we don’t hit friends, even mean friends,” scolded Max, his face very serious.

“I know buddy. I made a bad decision; it wasn’t the right thing to do.” I said.  “I have to go to work now, and get some propane so Gramma can cook supper.  I’ll be back tonight, but it won’t be until after your bedtime.

“Ok, but watch out for the badguys, they’re looking for us.”

“Max, can you tell me how you hide us?  Can you tell me how to hide myself?”

“Sure, Daddy, it’s easy.  You just turn your colors off, and they’ll think you’re one of them.”

“Oh, Ok.” I replied.  “I’ll see you tomorrow, but I’ll be home tonight while you’re asleep Ok Maxmonster?”

“Ok, I love you.” Max said, giving me a huge hug.

The four of us were pretty intimidating figures walking out of the house together at about 20 minutes after 10.  John bristled with guns; I think he added another gun to his vest every day.  Leo with her short swords crossed over her shoulders and batons at the small of her back.  Marshall carried his pair of sledge hammers with the heads riding on his shoulders, the shortened handles down his back in an X under his pack, and a shotgun sticking out of the top of his pack.  I swear he got physically bigger when he got infected, or more specifically as his body fought off the infection.  He was always tall, at about six four when we were younger, but I think he was close to 7 feet now.  His pants were all too short, I think that’s why he’d cut them all off into shorts.

I tried my best to fit in, my abilities were less useful in combat, so it was hard for me to feel quite as badass as my companions must.  I carried my Sig in a thigh holster I took off a zombie at the high school and Sammie, my trusty 30.06 scoped hunting rifle, strapped to my back.  Somehow, somewhere John had found me a bunch of twelve round magazines for it.  At the last minute I stuck a hatchet in my pack, handle up.  I didn’t have a go-to hand to hand weapon, but I felt like I should have something.  We loaded up in my favorite yellow Jeep Wrangler, and headed for town, the huge 36 inch super swampers humming as we drove down the road.

We parked the jeep about half a mile from the propane depot.  It had two 250,000 gallon tanks behind the building.  The whole property was surrounded by an eight foot high chain link fence topped with another two feet of razor wire.

We all had our usual packs on, but by now we were in good enough shape to jog the distance without too much trouble.  I’d suggested that we carry bolt cutters, but from the look Marshall gave me I let the subject drop.

When we got to the propane depot, Leo offered to run a quick circuit around the perimeter.

“Watch out for bunnies,” I said with a smirk.

She shot off, and before I finished chuckling, she was back.

“There are 2 zombies, each in the cab of a truck.  I don’t think they are able to figure out how to get out of the truck.  I didn’t spend a lot of time looking in the windows, but I didn’t see any inside the building as I went by.  There is a group down the hill out in the field to behind the depot, but they’re a quarter mile off, if we can avoid guns or excessive noise they shouldn’t give us any trouble.”

Marshall reached one hand forward and crushed the Master Lock padlock in his fist, the chains fell apart and we opened up the gates, closing them behind us.  I was reminded of that old TV commercial where they shot a Master Lock three times and it still held.  Clearly they hadn’t designed that lock to be Marshall proof.  I looped the chain back around the fence; it was enough to make it look like it was still locked before we headed towards the office.

We spent several minutes quietly tapping on the window glass and softly knocking on the doors before we decided the place was clear.  Both doors to the office were locked, but one of the high windows was slightly cracked open.  The bottom of the window was about even with the top of my head.  While Marshall was on the other side of the building, I got my fingers in and slid the window the rest of the way up.  When Marshall got around to my side, he laced his fingers together and squatted down.  I put my foot in his hands and he practically launched me into the building.

I came down on the inside on my head and saw stars.  I sat up, legs out in front of me feeling all over the back of my head for blood.  It took me a couple of seconds to shake off the dizziness.

“Sorry!” was his loudly whispered apology from outside.

Eventually able to get to my feet, I unlocked the door, allowing the other three into the small office.  There was a payment window at the end of the little lobby we were standing in.  To the right was a showroom.  There were hundreds of gas appliances, from wood stoves to gas logs, to ranges.  There were even propane powered refrigerators.  In the back of the showroom I found what I wanted, 3 large heaters that didn’t require venting the exhaust to the outside.

Leo and John moved off towards the back warehouse, while Marshall and I headed towards the office.  I was hoping to find the lockbox where they kept the keys to the delivery vehicles.  Marshall and I found a medicine cabinet sized steel box mounted to the wall by the back door.  He really was getting strong.  He braced his thumb against the door of the key cabinet, and his four fingers against the wall, and literally flipped the door open with just his thumb.

“Showoff,” I said.

“I was trying to be quiet!” he replied.

Inside there were six sets of keys.  Two of them were large Volvo keys those had to be for tractor trailer rigs.  One of them was a ford key.  I grabbed all 3 sets, hoping the ford key was to a pickup.  I’d forgotten that this place had such an extensive showroom, and was excited about the prospect of picking up energy efficient, reliable heat for the housing above the barn.

“John, Leo, do you copy,” I said into the throat mic of the radio on my belt.

“Tookes, what is this, the military?” Joked Leo.

“Right… Shut up.  Seemed like the thing to say,” I said. “Do you see any large generators back there? What about vent-free heaters?”

“Right-o mate, there’s about six gennies and a dozen heaters back here,” was John’s response.

“Alright, you two figure out how to get the loading dock doors open, Marshall and I will find a truck and get it backed up to the dock.”

Marshall and I headed for the back exit.  I hit the breaker bar on the door in stride.  I felt a little extra resistance as I plowed the door open, causing a zombie in the remnants of a gray pinstripe suit to go stumbling backwards.  Before I could reach back to pull the hatched I grabbed for this trip, Marshall shouldered past me knocking me around behind the door and smashed the thing with a huge hammer.  The hammer liquefied the creature’s skull, making a gruesome dull wet thud.  Bits of brain and skull splattered the inside of the door.  The corpse was launched backwards by the power of the blow, landing on its crushed head.  Its legs flipped up over its head, folding it in half with a crack of its spine.  I could smell the putrid gore like the whiff of a rotten fart running down the door and the wall next to me.

Marshall had cut the handles of his hammers off halfway, sanded the ends, and stuffed a thick nylon strap through the handle.  He was now holding a hammer in each hand, and stepped out into the yard. I let go of the door, and watched it swing shut.

“Shit, where did they come from?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but I got this,” replied Marshall confidently.  “I’ve been working on a new trick.”  He started swinging one hammer by the nylon strap, spinning it so fast it made a low bass whirring noise, like those Australian noise makers.  John called it a didgeridoo once when I referred to it as a boomerang on a string.  At that same time he referred to me as a drongo.  Still not sure what that means.

In one smooth motion he let the hammer go, and watched it smash through the faces of four zombies in a row, completely decapitating the first three, and caving in the skull of the fourth.  The corpses fell backwards against each other like dominoes, landing in a heap of vile flesh.  He switched his other hammer to his right hand, and began spinning it like he had the first.  Marshall used his left hand to pick the corpse of the smash-faced zombie up by one foot.  He let out a soft grunt as he slung it into the group of undead staring at us with that same vacant hunger-lust in their eyes.  There was a line of them steadily streaming through a hole in the fence behind this group.

I heard a crash behind us, as the fence caved in on the other side of the yard, and another group headed towards us from behind.

“Leo, John.  We’re going to need some help.” I said into the mic, drawing my hatchet and pistol.

“Aww shit, Vic.  It’s only a few,” complained Marshall finishing a golf style swing, which launched the top jaw and most of the skull of a zombie over the fence.

“Only takes one.” I said.

“Not for us.  Well, maybe for you.”

Leo and John got the door to the loading dock open at the other end of the building.    John was holding a cardboard box full of cheap five dollar buck knives, still in the plastic packaging.  He threw the first knife, package and all at the farthest zombie from us.  When the package hit the zombies head, the knife kept going, slicing through its container and entering the brain stem of the zed.  He threw six more packages, dropping six more zombies the exact same way.  At the same time, Leo took off in a blur.  The easiest way to follow her was to watch the heads flying in the air in the wake of her destruction.  It reminded me of a combine harvesting corn, shooting out the ears into a hopper behind.  This was her go-to method of undead destruction, running down the line faster than they could grab for her, kukri extended at neck height, lopping their heads off as she ran past.

“Hey Leo,” yelled John.  ”I bet I can get that one before you!” He said throwing a packaged knife with deadly accuracy at the walking corpse of an old lady wearing only a long tee shirt style nightgown.  On the front of the nightgown was a picture of a cat, sitting down on a rug.  The caption read “The best cure for insomnia is a furry friend.”  She wasn’t wearing any undergarments, but should have been.  In life she must have weighed two-fifty or better.  Her tits sagged to her waist.

Not to be outdone, Leo poured on a burst of speed from clear across the grounds.  She chased down the flying knife, reached up and plucked it from the air while she was running, then speared the old lady through the middle of her forehead on the end of a short sword.  She lifted the handle of the curved blade, splitting the old lady’s face as the corpse slid to the ground, forever unmoving.

“Not fair!” yelled John.  He threw the last seven knives in one quick movement, including the cardboard box.  Each knife flew straight and accurate, out of the box.  Each blade buried itself in the forehead of its target.

“Jesus, John, how hard do you have to throw those knives to get them to stick in their foreheads?” I shouted, almost laughing. In unison the corpses fell to their knees and then toppled forward all at the same time.  Three of them came to rest face down with their heads inside the empty cardboard box.

“Catch those, Leo!” he laughed.

While John and Leo were playing with the first group, Marshall smashed through all the undead in front of us, and was wading through a sea of bodies towards the gap in the fence.  He bent down and retrieved the hammer he’d thrown in his empty left hand, and then brought the two hammer heads together.  I’m sure the sound of two giant heat treated high carbon steel hammer heads clanging together with that much force would had been deafening, except that there was a head between them to absorb the blow.  The skull exploded in a circle outward from the head in all directions, launching gore twenty five feet in the air.  Marshall had an almost perfect line of gray matter and blood from his crotch to his forehead.

About halfway to the broken segment of fence he stopped at a pallet of propane tanks, the kind for regular gas grills.  He picked one off the stack with one hand and hurled it like a football into the crowd of zombies.  The 25 pound tank pushed a crowd of undead backwards towards the hole in the fence.

Feeling fairly useless, I walked around towards the front of the building, stepping over parts, the carnage was really amazing.

My radio crackled in my ear “Tookes, this is Bookbinder; we’re coming up that way.  I can see your location from the top of the police headquarters; there is a group of 200 or more heading your way.  What are you guys doing?  This horde was heading towards us, we had to do a little shooting.  They stopped mid-step, turned around and started walking towards you. “

“I don’t know, I said, we’re being fairly quiet.  We’ve got about 150 here we were killing hand to hand.”

His reply was short, “You took on 150 hand to hand?”

“Yea, we’re blowing off a little steam.  We’ve about got this cleaned up but I’ll let them know that the locals seem to know we’re here.”

“Hey!” I yelled with my newly acquired subspace voice.  I don’t really know what to call that voice, when I yell loud enough that people hear it in their heads, not just with their ears.  I was always a fan of Star Trek, so subspace seems to be the closest thing I can think of.  It came out loud enough for everyone within 2 miles to hear.  I needed to work on controlling that, or finding out if that was possible.

“There are 200 more coming, and maybe more behind that.  I suggest we go to weapons and end this.”  When I spoke, every zombie in the place turned to look at me for a moment.  They lowered their hands to their sides, and stared directly at me.  In unison their heads tilted slightly to the side, before they started walking towards me.  I guess they could hear me too.

Gunfire broke out from all over the propane depot yard.  I heard Marshall’s shotgun and John’s pistols decimating walkers.  I fired my own Sig through three magazines, and loaded the fourth before there was a break in the action.

The four of us came back together outside the depot office.

“I probably should have covered this before, but does anyone know how to fill one of these trucks with propane?” I asked.

“I would bet there is a fill tube, and a valve somewhere.” offered John somewhat less than helpfully.

“Good, that makes you the expert.  Figure it out,” I replied unable to keep from grinning.

“Marshall, Leo, find trucks with keys.  I want two full gas tankers at the house.”

Marshall and Leo left to find trucks that worked with the keys they had, while John sauntered over to the huge propane tanks.  John was one of those guys that could look at anything and figure out how it works.  Marshall and Leo opened the door to one of the trucks, a zombie fell out.  His entire body was swollen up like a balloon, it must have reached 150 degrees in the cab of that truck several times over this summer, and it hadn’t been good for this corpse.  He literally popped when he hit the ground, his skin splitting all the way up his back.  Only his shirt kept its liquefied innards from escaping.  Marshall smashed his now deflated head with a hammer and stepped up on the gas tank step to get in the truck.   Instead of sliding into the driver’s seat, he immediately got out, retched and vomited up his entire lunch all over the already rotten corpse.

“Oh god,” I overhead him say, “I’m not sure I can stay in that truck.  Let’s go open the other door, find your truck, and see if it airs out some.”

They walked over to the other truck, which thankfully didn’t have a rotten ghoul in it.  Leo climbed up into the cab, while Marshall walked to the back of the truck.  ”Push in the clutch and put it in first gear Leo!” He yelled up to the cab.  Then with what looked like very little effort, Marshall shoved the truck towards the filling area.  “Let out the clutch!”

She popped the clutch, and the truck sputtered.  The engine turned over twice before it roared to life, and took off.  She drove it a lap around the yard, and left it idling by the fill station.  She moved at what had to be her top speed to the second truck, it was nearly instant.  The only way to know she’d moved was the trail of dust rising up into the sky, as far as my eyes could tell, she disappeared at one truck and reappeared at the other.

Either the second truck had aired out some, or Leo was a little tougher than Marshall, because she hopped up in the truck as Marshall pushed that one up the hill.  With one shove, the truck went zero to 25 miles per hour uphill.  Marshall didn’t even grunt.

Just as that truck started, I heard the crash of chain link behind me.  When I ran around the other side of the building, I skidded to a halt.  Easily 300 more zombies had pushed over the fence, and were now coming our way.

“Guys!  More, front gates!” I yelled running back around the building.  I had one more full magazine for my pistol.  I had several for the rifle.  I raised Sammie to my shoulder and started mowing down zombies as fast as I could cycle the bolt.  Which I’m sure was a tenth as fast as John could, but he had his own guns.  Twelve shots netted me eleven dead zombies.  Replace the magazine, twelve more shots, and ten dead zombies.  By then, they had closed to within twenty yards, so I switched to the pistol.  I fired of its twelve shots.  At thirty feet I was faster and as accurate with the pistol.  When they were ten feet away I holstered my now empty sidearm and drew the hatchet attached to my pack.  Marshall was twirling both hammers.   John had both of his guns holstered and was reloading magazines, his hands a blur as he pulled bullets out of every pocket and pouch.

Leo was standing in line with us, her short swords drawn.  We looked like a line of heroes about to fight their last stand when suddenly the first row of undead collapsed in a hail of bullets.  I looked to the left; there was Bookbinder and his team, laying down cross fire. He’d come at this horde from the flank, his men were decimating them.  We were all out of ammo except John, and I think he was getting low.  John typically carried a thousand rounds on him, one of the reasons he preferred the smaller and lighter .22 and .9mm calibers.  They were so much lighter than 30.06 or .45 calibers, the magazines were half the size, and John was just as deadly with the smaller bullets.

When this latest wave was dead, Bookbinder, Reineer, Hostetler, Garrett, Johnson came walking up.

“There are at least a thousand more that all turned their heads this way right before we heard that first engine start up.  We need to get out of here, quickly.”

“I’ve got the filling figured out I think Tookes.  But we need power.” said John.

“Alright, let’s get out with what’s in the trucks.  Marshall, do you have any idea if there was anything in them?” I asked.

“The retched smelling one was way heavier than the first one.  I think the first one might be close to empty, but I think the last one was pretty full.”

“Ok, let’s go with that, we need to grab a truck to load the generators, heaters, and more propane.  Leave one generator in the warehouse to power the fill equipment, and we’ll be quieter.” I said.

We loaded up in the trucks, I noticed Marshall was somehow faster than Leo to the ‘non stinky’ truck.  I hopped into the passenger seat of the rancid truck with Leo, but I only had to ride with her to the jeep.

Less than three minutes later, John pulled out with a pickup truck loaded with five propane generators, six vent-free heaters, and three propane powered stand lamps, like old-time gas burning street lamps.

When Leo and I got to the jeep, Bookbinder’s team hopped off the back of the tanker trucks and got into a pair of police cars and the swat van.

“Holy crap Charlie, you got the swat van!”

“Sir.  That was my mission, sir.  We had to engage very light hostiles, the police barracks was empty, save 3 infected in the holding cells in the drunk-tank.  We ended those three, and had the run of the place.  This big heap,” he said as he pounded the sides of the swat van, “Was the only thing that would carry the radio repeater, so we had to take it.”

I grinned at Charlie “Nice work M1.”

Charlie beamed a smile back at me, and his men looked proud.

“What about m3?  How are they doing at the CVS?” I asked.

“Scott reported that they had no problems.  They were supposed to radio if they had any contact, they checked in about twenty minutes ago that the only infected they saw turned around and started stumbling this way.” replied Charlie.  “His second, Jacobsen will have a full list of supplies when they report back, but Scott said the CVS had not been scavenged before.”

“And m5? Did they have any trouble at the clinic?”

“No, Johnson reported three contacts with infected.  They killed those three with hand to hand weapons when they breached the building.  The few they saw wandering towards the clinic turned around and left before they got within melee range.  They were also successful in loading up diagnostic equipment and prescription drugs,” said Charlie.  “They found over seven hundred Percocet tablets in the doctor’s desk.”

I laughed out loud, “That’s too funny.  Doc had a monkey on his back.”

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����s wrong.  My gut tells me something is wrong.”

Into the throat mic, I whispered “Bookbinder, check out our position, head around behind the house, there’s something wrong here.  Have John and Marshall move up past the yellow house to our left, but circle over a block before coming up this way.”

Leo and I stood there, transfixed by the man’s screams.  ”Help!” He yelled as I poked my head around the corner “My name is Andrew Zione, Help!  I’m humaaa”.  His cries left off into a gurgle of screams as the zombie bit into his crotch, ripping meat from the inside of his leg, I could hear its teeth scraping Andrew’s thigh bone.

The thing pulled its head away dragging tendons with it like floss between the festering corpses teeth, blood spurted from Andrew’s leg wound.  The zombie chewed twice and swallowed the hunk of thigh meat.  The next bite the zombie took was Andrew’s manhood, ripping it away from his body, chewing slowly.  The screams raised several octaves and became louder, as the zombie dove in for a third bite, peeling the flesh away from his belly, allowing Andrew’s guts to slide out like links of raw sausage onto the grass.

“Fuck, how is he still alive?” I said.  The screams still haunt me.

“Vic, I… We… We can’t… This can’t go on.” Leo stammered.

“Leo, there’s something very wrong.  This is a setup, I can feel it.”

I considered running in there, a shadow shot out from my body.  When shadow-me got two feet from Andrew’s decimated body it’s head exploded, and it fell over sideways.

“There’s a sniper somewhere.” I whispered into the mic.

“Sir, M1 is breaching the houses to the south.  Marshall and John are heading around to the north.  We’ll find it.”

I tried to speak quietly using my subspace voice, focused entirely on John’s aura in my mind, attempting to speak only to him. “John, there’s a sniper that’s got us pinned here.  I can’t see him.  We can’t move.  Find him and take it out.”

“Leo, did you hear me just then?”

“I didn’t hear a thing.”

“Yes, I was trying to talk directly to John.  I hope he heard me.”

Andrew kept screaming.  This girl was definitely being controlled by something, I’ve only seen a few zombie attacks like this one, mostly on that first day, but those zombies were ravenous, they bit and ate whatever parts came near their mouths.   These bites are being chosen to inflict the maximum pain without killing the victim.  The zombie girl moved upwards, leaving a trail of his guts lying on the grass.  She sat on his chest and took a bite of Andrew’s face, ripping his nose off.  Fresh blood spattered the ghoul’s face, as she sat up and slowly chewed, looking directly at us.  Andrew’s screams became wet, gurgling moans of pain.  He was writhing under her, but her knees held his arms pinned securely.

The rancid corpse turned around and put her ass on Andrews face as she reached into his belly and pulled out a rope of thick slimy guts.  I’d swear she looked directly at me and smiled before she bit his intestine in half.  Stinking bile, so strong we could smell it from our spot hiding under a bush leaked out of the intestine, down her chin, dripping into the man’s stomach cavity.

Andrew’s moans became quieter, muffled when the zombie sat down on his face, smothering his anguished cries.  Almost all of the undead we’d encountered had shit themselves, and of course they’d never bothered to clean up the natural release at death.  At least Andrew had no nose with which to smell the 6 month old rotting feces covered ass that was smothering him to death while the zombie ate his guts.  Finally the muffled moaning stopped completely.

At last, we heard a shot ring out from the south, followed by Bookbinder’s voice on the radio “Sniper terminated.  All clear sir.”

I stepped around the corner of the house, sig in my hand ready to put both corpses out of their misery.  When I get in sight of the bloody mess on the ground, there are no zombies to be found.  No footprints in the grass, no blood trail, no nothing.  Just a bloody, mashed down spot in the long grass, and a bit of intestine lying on the lawn.

“What the fuck?” I swore to myself.

Leo sobbed into my shoulder.  The horror of what we just saw was too much for even the tough Spartan woman.  I turned and hugged her tightly for a moment before we walked back to the jeep.

The ride home was quiet.  We saw no more zombies as we sped down the highway, paying no attention to the speed limit signs we passed.  It wasn’t likely we’d ever pass another car.

We spotted a herd of nine deer off to the side of the road.  In the rear view mirror I saw John point his pistol out the side of the truck he was driving.  As he did, I slowed the jeep.  He fired two shots, and two deer dropped over sideways where the stood.  The jeep bounced easily over the edge of the road and down a small bank.  The rest of the crew kept going the last two miles to the house as I pulled up to the two dead deer.

“Help me load these.” I said, hopping out the driver’s side of the jeep.

Leo stepped down off the other side, and said “Poor deer, never had a chance.  At least when I hunt I give them a sporting chance, I run them down.”

“Leo, these deer died to feed us.  They were never afraid, they never felt anything.  I’m grateful for the meat.  There is no sport in you running down a buck.  You can run 100 times faster than it can.” I chided.

Leo looked hurt, her face scrunched into a frown.  I stepped towards her, wrapping her in my arms.

“I’m sorry darlin’. I’m a little out of sorts from watching that guy Andrew, but I couldn’t risk your life for him, he was infected by the time we saw him.  I couldn’t risk you.  What if that sniper had been as good at shooting as John?  What if he shot you? I buried my head in her shoulder, and hugged her for a long time.

We loaded the two carcasses up on the hood of the Jeep, and headed for home.  It had been a long day, I was tired, and I still had to find out how The CVS and Clinic raids went, dress and process these two deer, and find some time to be a father to my little boy, who I missed very much at that moment.

Book 1, “What Zombies Fear: A Fathers Quest” is available for $2.99 from Amazon

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By the time I made it back to Max, I had a pretty solid plan in place for clearing the zombies on the bridge, but I had to find a couple of things first.  About halfway around the curve ahead of me, there was a downhill road off to the left.  It went through a small group of houses, a strip club/biker bar named “Twin Peaks”, and a small shabby looking mom-and-pop hardware store.

I struggled to push the silver SUV to the top of the  hill,  but with one final heave I managed to start it down the other side and hopped in the drivers seat to steer us into the bar parking lot.  I felt really naked without a handgun, and I was thinking a biker bar might be my best bet for finding one in this general location.  The gravel crunched under the heavy weight of my overloaded SUV seemed louder than gunfire, and I immediately wished i’d left it on the pavement

I pulled my truck right beside the building, as close as I could get Max’s side to the wall without hitting it.  He could probably wiggle out, but there was no way anything was getting in his door.  Of course, they could come in the drivers side of the truck, but having the one side blocked made me feel better.

“Focus, Tookes,” I said to myself “There’s going to be a mess in there, check yourself”.

“Don’t forget your hatchet,” Max reminded me from the back seat, forcing me to look down and see that it had fallen out of its loop on my belt, and beside the center console of the truck.

“Max, I’ll be right back buddy.  You stay here, but undo your buckles, just in case we need to run.”

“We’ll be fine daddy, you can handle these two.”

I’m learning to trust the little guy’s offhand comments, so I prepared myself for two or more.  It was imperative that I remain silent, I’m under a mile from the bride now, and its very likely that the zombies up there would hear any gunshots.  There was no way I was going in there without a gun though, so I took the black nylon strap off of my 30.06 and tied it to the ak47, and slung the whole thing over my shoulder before walking over to the door of the bar.

Gingerly I tried the knob on the solid steel doors, and in what might have been my first stroke of good luck, I found they were unlocked.  I nudged the heavy doors inward, and quickly let them swing closed with a clang.  Once closed, I banged on one with the back of the hatchet a couple of times, and stepped a few feet back.  This was a two fold test, could they open doors, and were they attracted to sound.  As an experiment, I was ecstatic with the results.  I heard at least 2 banging on the doors, but they were unable to open them.

From about 5 feet away, I got a running start and hit the doors low.  The doors flew open from the center, sweeping the 2 zombies apart and throwing them back into the room.  My momentum carried me, hatchet in hand, right by one who was struggling to get up when the blade sunk deep into his forehead.  With 1 final convulsion, he was dead again,  and my hatchet was free of his head.  The other zombie was down and not moving.  Was there any chance I was this lucky?  I kicked her head, and saw that the back of her head was smashed in, making a mess of her platinum blonde hair.  I think her back was turned when I hit the door, and the edge of it split her skull.  She was wearing a fluorescent g-string, and a garter with pretty good stack of bills rubber banded around it.

“She won’t be needing this,” I thought to myself as I unwrapped the rubber-band and pocketed the thick wad of bills.  I wasn’t sure if I’d ever need it, but a wad of cash might still have some trade value.  The room smelled horrible.  Even after just one day, the corpses smelled terrible, like 30 lbs of rotten hamburger.

Feeling like a badass from my easy victory, I checked through the bar, looking for interesting things.  I set 3 unopened bottles on the bar, 1 bottle of grain alcohol, a bacardi 151, and an old looking bottle of scotch.  Under the bar I found a box of match books, with “Twin Peaks” underneath a pole dancer on the covers, this was a classy place.  I added the match books to my pile on the bar, and headed back towards the office.

I listened at the office door, knocked with my hatchet, and waited.  Hearing nothing, I opened the door and peered into the the dim room.  There was a large, beat up oak desk against one wall.  I flipped through all the cups and trays on top looking for keys, before even trying the drawers.  I found 2 sets, and tried the drawers in the desk.  The top drawer was the only one unlocked, so I started trying keys.  In the bottom left drawer, I found the handgun I knew would be there.  I read the barrel, it was a smith and wesson model 629, a nickel revolver with black hand grips and what I hoped was matching ammunition, 44 magnum.  I pressed the cylinder release and emptied a round out into my hand, it was the same as those in the  mostly full 100 round box.    Replacing the round, and snapping the barrel shut, I slid the weapon into my waistband, and quickly surveyed the room but didn’t see anything else useful.

On the way out of the building, I grabbed the liquor bottles and matches off the shelf, and headed out to the truck with them to check on Max.  He was sleeping soundly in his seat, so I took the opportunity to really study him.  He was so big, and yet so small.  I remembered the time when he could fit in 1 arm, and how I used to carry him everywhere like a football.  I hated leaving him here, in the truck, sleeping, but it seemed less dangerous than taking him into a building that probably had zombies in it.  With all of my “Twin Peaks” loot dropped off in the back of the truck, I left the ak47, and went across the street to the hardware store, in search of a few more items needed for my plan.

As I walked across the street, I thought to myself “Tookes, you idiot.  You should have asked Max how many were in here,” followed by a quick head shake and “what in the hell am I thinking.  He’s 3 and a half years old.”

When I got to the truck, I looked in the back seat to see Max crying but otherwise Ok, and yanked open the passenger door.   Candi’s lifeless body rolled out of the truck onto the ground.  I fell to my knees; she had been hit by two bullets, one to the abdomen and one to the right temple.

I sobbed, I screamed, I raged, I yelled at god or the trees or whatever was listening.  I wept for what seemed like hours, tears streaming down my cheeks, wondering what I was going to do without her.  Imagining trying to survive in this life without my partner, without my team mate.  Ultimately, it was Max’s small voice that brought me back to reality.

“Daddy,” he said calmly, “We have to go.”  Gathering myself, I kissed her on the forehead, stood and walked around to the front of my wrecked truck.  There were bullet holes right through the passenger front fender, front passenger door, and rear quarter panel, but not a single bullet in the rear passenger door.  The window was even still intact.

I looked down at the rifle in my hands, an American version of an AK47, 7.62mm bullets; the same size as my rifle, but not quite as powerful.  They wouldn’t pass through the engine block, but they’d do a number on all the stuff around it.  I jumped inside the truck, turned the key, and miraculously the truck roared to life.  From the sound, it had taken a shot to the exhaust manifold.  I wouldn’t be sneaking up on anyone, but it would run.  I checked on Max, his fever seemed down, but not out, and the bite mark on his leg was closed up.  It didn’t look all that bad actually, maybe he didn’t get infected.  I handed him the whole box of cereal bars, and he unwrapped one and started eating.

The tire was easy enough, I knew there was a benefit to keeping the spare in the roof basket, even if all my off-roading buddies complained about raising the center of gravity and called me silly for liking the look.

‘Who’s the mall crawler now?’ I thought to myself, thinking back to the derogatory term real “Rock Crawlers” used to describe guys like me.  I left the old wheel on the side of the road, a bullet had passed through the tire and out the wheel, and it was useless now.  In the back of the truck I pulled a blanket out of one of the plastic storage tubs, and wrapped Candi’s body up in it.  I would bury her in the garden at Mom’s, there is a beautiful spot in the formal garden we’ve often talked of having our ashes spread there.  Right now I didn’t have time to think about all that; I had to get us across the bridge fifteen miles south.

Heading south at around sixty-five miles per hour along the deserted highway, the wind blowing in Candi’s window was bothering Max, who was trying to sleep after eating four breakfast bars.  I had about an hour of daylight left, and I was facing a decision.  If this outbreak was in both in both York and Frederick, there was a good chance Leesburg, Virginia was going to be infected as well, and I had to pass through the most heavily populated section.  The town of Leesburg was the part of the trip I was most dreading.  If I could get across the river tonight, there were miles and miles of undeveloped national forest between the bridge and the town.

My first option was to find a deserted fire lane leading a few miles into the national forest, pull off and camp for the night in the truck, with Candi.  My second option was to continue on, with one headlight, one fog light, and the two KC style running lights mounted to the roof basket.  It was an hour and a half further to my family home-place after Leesburg.  I’d been making pretty good time, and the whole incident at Frederick had only taken about forty minutes total.  I was going to have to take it much slower from now on, and Max wouldn’t be able to stay in his seat much longer.  At the very least he was going to need to get out to go to the bathroom, and the thought of getting him out of the truck frightened me the most.  I can’t afford to make any more mistakes.  My heart can’t take any more mistakes like Frederick.

Still pondering, I slowed down and stopped at the last curve in the road before the bridge.  I whispered to Max that I was going to get out, but that I wouldn’t go far.  I was stopped about a mile from the bridge.  I wish I had some high powered binoculars, but my  rifle scope would have to do.

I scrambled up the embankment, and a couple hundred feet up the side of the hill into the woods.  I couldn’t get too far from the truck, but I needed the elevation and cover of the trees up here.  There was enough light to see the old blue-green iron bridge, and see that there was another set of cars blocking both ends.  I watched through the scope as zombies walked up and down.   I watched for as long as I could, not wanting to leave Max alone for too long.  I counted five zombies, four of them walking fairly normally, and one who was stumbling.  The four were armed with various assault rifles; I was too far away and not knowledgeable enough in firearms to tell what exactly they were from this distance.  They were all pacing back and forth, about half the length of the bridge.  I watched the road leading towards me, and saw nothing, I looked in the woods on either side of the river and they seemed likewise clear.

I began to formulate a plan as I headed down to the truck, back to Max, back to my reason for surviving

The roads were empty.  We passed mile after mile of farmland, cows and other livestock grazing peacefully in the fields.  Every few minutes we slowed down as we passed through some small town with a few dozen houses and a single traffic light.  In Ladiesburg, Maryland, we saw a woman bent over a man in the middle of the street.  She was chewing on his arm, ripping large hunks of flesh and gristle.

I think that’s when Candi started to believe me.  “Go, Go!” She said, firmly.  “Drive around them, we have to get away.”

Max was thankfully watching a movie, and Candi and I talked about the situation.  She flipped out when I told her about the guy in the street this morning at work, and how close I’d gotten to him.

I explained about my run from the office, and the gang of zombies in the parking garage, all about chuck, and how his intestines were looped all the way down to the ground.  I described the gore, and how he was still walking.  I described them shaking the truck, and bending the brush guard.

Candi was always a realist.  I was always the one thinking about zombies, or aliens or natural disaster.  I don’t think she would have ever believed me if she hadn’t seen one with her own eyes.

We made good time.  The closer we got to the city, the more often we saw other cars.  I passed several heading north, but saw no one else heading south.  Just above Frederick Maryland, we’d been on the road for about an hour, I slowed the truck down.  There was a wreck ahead, were cars across the road, but something didn’t look right.  The whole scene set my instinct to run.

As I got closer, I realized they’d been parked there, not wrecked.  None of them were dented.  I reached down beside me and pulled my rifle up on my lap, flicking the safety off.  “Max, this is going to get loud buddy. Keep your headphones on, okay?”

“Yes Daddy,” he said, “But Daddy, don’t shoot the ones in the front, shoot the lady with red hair in the back, she has the most bugs.”

With my rifle ready, I cranked the wheel to the left and gassed the truck quickly towards the median to get around the cars blocking the road.  I knew the median would be muddy, but my truck was pretty tough, and it seemed better to risk the mud than try to push the cars off the road with my already damaged brush guard.  I reached up and hit the sunroof button, and it slid open quickly as my tires hit the grassy median.  As I passed the first row of cars, I heard the crack of a rifle, and a bullet hit the front of my truck.  I floored the truck, as a spray of bullets riddles down the passenger side.  The passenger side rear tire went flat, and I realized I did exactly what they wanted me to; I had driven into their trap.  All four tires spun in the mud, slinging it everywhere, but we were slogging forward at a snail’s pace.  Random thoughts ran through my head.  I was calm, ticking off a situation assessment.   My truck won’t last through this.  Max and Candi are on the side of the truck facing oncoming fire.  Anger flares inside me as I saw the steering wheel back to the right, heading out of the median, back on the road facing directly into the incoming fire.  “Get Down, Candi!” I yelled over the gunfire.

“Hold on!” I yell, as the front of the truck smashes into the corner of one of the cars.  My headlight blinks out and the truck stalled, still taking fire.  The passenger side window blew out, and Candi slumped forward. I felt a warm spray hit my face, and knew that she’d been hit.

“Mommy!” Max screamed, barely audible as the blood pumped through my ears.  Time seemed to slow down, I ripped my seatbelt off, and stood up out of the sunroof, oblivious to the oncoming fire, and lined up the scope of my rifle.  Center mass on the first target.  Remembering the police officer pumping round after round into that man this morning, I adjusted my aim upwards and watched his head explode through the scope of my rifle.  In the time between squeezing the trigger and the bullet hitting the target, I noticed he was unarmed.  I raised my rifle, scanning behind the line of now approaching people, and spotted her.

She was tall, thin, with long red hair.  She was holding an assault type rifle, long banana clip sticking out of the receiver, one of those thirty round types.  I was vastly outgunned, if I was going to save my family this had to end quickly.  I lined up the scope on her head, exhaled, this was a long shot, and I haven’t shot in a while.  Squeezed the trigger, I heard the rifle report, although it seemed muffled and distant.  Through the scope, I watched her head move to the side, just as I squeezed, like she knew. Or saw the bullet coming, but how could anyone move that fast?

I levered the bolt forward and back, and squeezed off another shot, bolt forward, ejected the spent round, back, squeeze.  I aimed at both sides of her head.  She dodged back the other way, avoiding the second bullet, and my third round was low.  Low, but it connected with her shoulder.  She spun around with the bullets impact, and I levered back and forward again.

My last shot hit her center mass, right in the middle of her upper back.  It shattered her spine, and I lept out of the truck through the sunroof.  Three steps away from the truck I took aim at one of the closer zombies, and watched it crumple to the ground in my scope.  I hadn’t fired a shot.

Three more zombies fell in succession without me firing a shot.  I ran through the line of zombies, up the embankment on the far side of the road, towards the red head.  I remembered Max telling me to kill her first, and at this point, that was the only information I had.  Scrambling up the hill, I saw her lying on her back, a very large hole in her chest.  Except that the hole was getting smaller.  She was healing in front of my eyes.  I let out a guttural scream, and fired one more shot at very close range, decimating her head.

I turned to see that the remaining four zombies were heading my way.  I slid the bolt forward, and back, lined up on the closest one, and once again it crumpled to the ground.  Looking away from the scope, I saw that all four had fallen mid-step.  Their heads appeared intact, there was no obvious reason, but I wasn’t going to go inspect too closely.  I grabbed the redhead’s rifle, and one more magazine from her back pocket.  An automatic would come in handy.  I hadn’t seen any other armed zombies, and it dawned on me that I hadn’t checked on Max and Candi.  I leaped off the embankment, falling nearly fifteen feet to the road surface, and took off running for the truck.

“Candi,” I said as she came walking up the hardwood stairs, her heels clicking on every one. “Zombies.  Max is bitten.  We’re bugging out.”

It was not my finest monologue.  I probably could have worded that more tactfully, but at the moment I was feeling fairly stressed out.

“Mommy!” Max said excitedly, “Mommy, I’m hungry.  The inside bugs are eating everything.”

Candi looked at me, puzzled “Tookes, what?”

I pull Candi into our bedroom, and start to explain.  “Candi, I know you’re not going to believe this, but I promise you, it’s absolutely true.”  I saw Chuck get eaten.  He was inside out, and he tried to eat me.  His guts were hanging down past his knees, and he was walking towards me.  I could see all the way through him.  I saw strangers attack and bite people, and when those people died, they stood up and tried to bite more people.  I watched a man literally eat the throat out of another man.  I ran as fast as I could.  I got in my truck and drove straight to Max’s school.  I can’t begin to describe the horror inside there.  I killed someone with a flashlight.  I didn’t get to the daycare fast enough.  Max got bitten.  Everyone I’ve seen get bitten has gotten sick.  Max just has a fever.  I think I got to it in time.  When we got home I dumped everything I could find on his leg, from rubbing alcohol to peroxide.  He’s got a little fever, but he’s still Max.  I’m sure he’s going to be fine.”

Before I could say anything else, Candi rushed over to Max and picked him up.  “Oh my god, Tookes, he’s burning up!”

“I know.  You can see the bite mark on his leg.” I said, “I gave him ibuprofen, the fever is down some.  In an hour we can give him some Tylenol too, I believe that will knock it down even further.  I think he’s going to be Ok, Max is a tough kid.”

“Candi, we’re getting out of here, we’re going to moms.  Check the closet and see if there is anything else you need.  I think I got everything.  The truck is packed; we need to leave in ten minutes. ”

“We need to get Max to the doctor.  I don’t want to go to your mothers.  We need to go to the hospital,” she said.

“The hospital is the worst place we could go,” I explained.  “That’s where everyone who’s been bitten will go.  I watched a man get bit and then stand up.  He had no guts, you could see all the way through him, but he was standing up!” I was almost yelling at this point, only worry of frightening Max keeping me from it.  “We have to go to Moms.  It’s in the country. It will be safe, there’s no one around.  Now please, go get your things!”

Candi went off to the bedroom, I knew she was going to come back with a few things she couldn’t leave the house without, but I didn’t have much time to argue with her.  We needed to move.  Between Maryland and Virginia is the Potomac River. Where Route 15 crosses the river, is a five hundred yard two-lane bridge.  The river is deep and fast.  It’s an hour and a half south of my house, and I knew if that bridge was impassable we were in serious trouble.  We had to get across that bridge before it got shut down, or worse, the National Guard put up a checkpoint there.

“Max, buddy, how are you feeling?” I asked walking back into the living room.

“I’m okay Daddy, why is Mommy mad? Is it because I got bit?”

“No duder, she’s not mad at you.  She’s worried because you’re hurt.  We don’t like to see you hurt, it makes us sad.”

“Don’t be sad Daddy, it doesn’t hurt,” he said.

Max’s verbal skills were always ahead of other kids his age, but he still had some trouble with words.  Today he was speaking like an eight year old.  I pushed that out of my mind, picked him up and yelled to Candi “Three minutes!  Come out to the truck.”

I checked the windows to make sure there was no one around, and ran across the lawn to the 4runner with Max.  “Max, this is going to be a long trip.  What movie do you want to watch?” I’d primarily bought the truck for road trips; one of the first things I added was a DVD player in the passenger headrest so Max could watch movies while we drove.  It was a moment of Daddy genius.  I have no idea how parents did road trips before DVD players.

“Finding Memo!” Exclaimed Max.

I started the movie, and went around to the driver’s seat.  For the fifth time that day I checked my rifle to make sure there were bullets in the magazine, and one in the chamber.  I flicked the safety from “Safe” to “Fire” and back to “Safe”.

Just inside the three minute window I’d given her, Candi came running out of the house.  She’d changed into a pair of jeans and sneakers, and a hoodie.  She was carrying a purse, and from the way it was swinging it looked heavy.  She hopped into the truck and we were away, starting our three hour drive towards safety.  I thought.

My earlier feelings that I was exaggerating the situation were now firmly gone, replaced by the need to get to Max and make sure he was safe.

I sped down the alley way between the office and the parking garage, no sign of the group that followed me up the stairs in my rear-view.  Driving down Philadelphia St. I began to get a picture of how badly York had been affected, every block or so I saw a house with a zombie beating on the door.  They would look around at me as I drove by, a few of them even took a few stumbling steps towards me.  I was driving about fifty miles per hour down a twenty-five miles per-hour street, and I was well past them before they could make it down the steps and across the sidewalk to the street.  The only thing keeping me from finding out the maximum speed of my truck was the thought of hitting someone running away from one of these things.  There were no cars on the road, other than the ones parked along the side, making it extra difficult to see someone who might run out in front of me.  The Four Runner makes a lot of noise, between the aftermarket exhaust designed to boost the power of its v8 engine and the noise of the off road tires, but who knows if someone would be paying attention to traffic.  I could see people watching me pass out of their second story windows, a look of fear on their faces.

‘How do they all know to stay in their houses?’ I wondered, and turned on the radio to see if I could catch any information.  I scrolled through all of my pre-programmed channels, and heard only music.  On the AM dial, all I heard were the right wingers spewing the same crap they all must get in their daily talking points memos.

Radio off; I started the plan for picking up Max.  My hope was that this mess hadn’t reached him, but given the situation in the city, I couldn’t be sure of that.  I ran down the list of items in my truck thinking about anything I could use as a weapon.

In the cargo area I had my tool box, which probably wouldn’t be much help.  Mostly it contained small tools, at best a lug wrench.  It also had my roadside emergency kit.  There was a flare in it, and a can of wd40 in my toolbox.  My instinct said that a flaming zombie was even worse than a regular zombie, so I decided quickly against that.  I keep a four cell mag light in the truck; I always told Candi it was in case I had to change a tire at night.  Really it was because holding that thing made me feel like a badass.   That was my weapon of choice.

Outside of the city, the houses were set way back off the road.  I eased around two car wrecks noting that none of the wrecked cars had any people in them or any bodies at all.  One car had bloody footprints leading away.

When I finally pulled in to Max’s day care, there were two cars in the parent pickup spots.  I parked in the third and looked in the picture window.  It was bad.  Inside there was a woman chewing on the leg of a child, her shoulder so gnawed that her left arm hung limply at her side.  The child was screaming, even out in the parking lot I could hear screams from further inside.  Wasting no time, without a thought I brought the MagLight up to the picture window and hit it as hard as I could.  The flashlight bounced off the window, leaving just a chip.

The door to the building was always locked.  Under normal circumstances, you rang the doorbell, and one of the teachers came and opened the door for you.  I smashed out one of the smaller panes in the door with no trouble, reached through and yanked the bar to open the door, cutting my arm on the broken glass.  I didn’t even notice it at the time; I was so intent on getting to Max.  I ran inside, towards the back of the facility.

As I passed by the woman feasting on the now silent child, I swung the MagLight in a giant arc and smashed the butt of the flashlight into her temple.  She went over in a heap.  I leapt the baby gate into the back area without missing a step.  One of the teachers was holding Max, another teacher was trying to fend off a zombie with a chair.  The zombie was pinned in the corner by a small child sized chair, but that left it enough room to bite the teacher on the arm.  The teacher screamed and dropped the chair.  The zombie stumbled forward just in time to connect with the back of my flashlight.  I smashed its teeth out, and clearly shattered its nose, but it didn’t go down like the first one.  I wasn’t wasting any time though.  I snatched Max out of the other teacher’s arms and ran out of the building.  I could hear the teachers screaming for help as I ran off.  I’ve always felt a little guilty about not helping them more, but Max was all I cared about at that moment.

I set Max in his car seat and ran around to the front of the truck.

“You forgot my buckles, Daddy!” Max yelled from his seat.

“I know buddy, we’re not safe.  We need to run now, and we have to hurry.  Can you put them on yourself?” I replied.

“Not safe because of the bugs?” asked Max.  Not knowing how to reply, I just said, “Yea buddy, because of the bugs,” as I floored it out of the parking lot.  It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed the two arcs of a bite on Max’s calf.

I yanked the straps off of his car seat and ran him into the bathroom as fast as I could.  I started dumping everything I could think of on his little leg.  He never once cried, even when I drained an entire bottle of rubbing alcohol over the small cuts.  After that I poured hydrogen peroxide, sprayed iodine, slathered it up with Neosporin, and wrapped it in a bandage.

“It’s okay Dad, Micah’s mommy bit me but the bugs can’t hurt me”.

“You’re gonna be fine buddy, I promise.” I said to him, hoping against hope that there was some immunity or that I got it disinfected fast enough.  Knowing I did not. Tears welled up in my eyes.  “Let’s go watch some Wonder Pets.”

“Yay!” Max yelled and ran into the living room. “Wonder Pets, Wonder Pets, we’re on our way!” he sang.

I turned on the TV and found an episode I’ve only seen three hundred times.  “Max, I need you to stay here while I do some work in the basement, call me if you need something!”

“Okay Daddy.” Was all he said, already engrossed in the episode.

In the kitchen, I grabbed our recycling bin and dumped all the aluminum cans in the trash.  I refilled the bin with all the food from our pantry.  We’d just been to the warehouse club, and were well stocked. I carried that bin down to the garage, opened the garage door and backed my truck into the garage.

One more trip with canned food, and I started grabbing clothing.  Everything from Max’s closet went into a Rubbermaid tub.  My yard work clothes, jeans, Dickies, work shirts, flannels, fleeces, and our heavy coats, even though it was summer, I didn’t think I’d ever see this place again.  I changed out of my suit and into camouflage cargo pants.  They were the heaviest canvas pants I owned, even though it was summer, I wanted padding and layers between me and anyone I had to go through.

From the garage I packed all of my hand tools, and my battery operated DeWalt skill saw, reciprocating saw, and drill combo kit.  My chain saw, my bow saw, my chopping axe and my hatchet.

I stopped at the hatchet for a second, noting that it had a belt loop on the leather sheath. So far, that was the best weapon I had, so I added the sheath to my belt and strapped it to my side.  Feeling better, I continued to pack everything I thought might come in even marginally handy.

Finally I made it to the gray plastic gun case on the back of the shelf.  I owned several guns, but Candi hated them.  When we got married, I told her I sold my two pistols and shotgun; but that was a lie.  Really they were wrapped in oil cloth in a hidden gun safe at my mothers.  I wished I had them now.

I grew up an outdoorsy kind of guy, when I was in my teens and twenties I went hunting a couple of times a year.  I bought the Savage arms 111 FCNS 30.06 a couple of seasons before I met Candi.  It was excessive for deer in the woods around my house, but I’ve always wanted to go elk hunting.  At the time, the salesman had thrown in two extra six round magazines to go with it.  I had two boxes of ammunition, forty rounds total.  I loaded one magazine and inserted it into the rifle I’d always called Sammie, pulled the bolt to chamber a round.  The action was smooth, still oiled up from when I dug it out a year ago to clean and oil it.  It hasn’t been used in many years, but I always tried to take care of it.  It would need a good cleaning at some point, but would be serviceable now.  I ejected the magazine and refilled the empty slot.  I loaded and slipped the other two magazines into one of the cargo pockets of my pants, comforted by the weight there.  I attached the scope to the rail, a Leupold 14mm x 50mm. The case went into the back of the truck.  At one point on a calm day I could hit a two liter bottle from eight hundred yards with this rifle and scope.  It had been a long time though.  I’d always promised Candi that I would keep this gun hidden and locked in its case when Max was born.

The truck was fully loaded with everything I could fit.  It was weighed down, but would make the trip.  I hadn’t checked on Max for a few minutes.  When I got up there he was red, and flush with a fever.  I felt his head, he was burning up.  In the upstairs bathroom, I’d left a few things to pack at the last minute.  I grabbed his bottle of liquid ibuprofen and sucked up a dropper full.  Candi would say, “He only gets half a dropper,” but I couldn’t afford to mess around with this fever, and Max has always been bigger and taller than everyone his age.  He loved the taste of medicine, so it was never a problem to get him to take it.  His show was over, so I started a new episode and called Candi.

“Hey Babe.  I have Max, we’re at home.  How long until you get here?”

In typical Candi fashion, she started off by asking what was going on, and yelling at me for letting my phone battery die.

“Candi, I don’t have time.  Where are you?”

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked.

“You are not going to believe me.  Drive home; do not stop for any reason.  Do not stop.  I’ll explain when you get here. Where are you?”

“I’m about five minutes away.”

“Ok, see you in five.  Do not stop for anything.  Pull your car into the garage when you get here.” I ordered. “I love you the most!”

“Love you too, you’re scaring me.”

I will explain when you get here, just get here.”  As I hung up the phone, I said to Max, “Max, I need to move my truck out of the garage so mommy can get in.  Do you hear me?”

“Okay Daddy.  I’m hungry. The bugs are eating all my food.”

“I’ll get you a snack in just a minute buddy.” I said.

I checked at the door, and no one was in sight, so I pulled my truck out of our one car garage and parked it on the street.  Before I locked it up I grabbed a serial bar out of the back and headed inside.

I opened the bar for Max and picked up my phone again to call my mother.

“Hey Mom. We’re coming down to your house.  There’s some really ugly stuff happening up here, and we need to get safe.”

“Oh my God honey is everyone okay?” she asked.

“We’re fine; Max has a bite on his leg.  He has a fever and is saying some strange things.  I’m worried about him, but I don’t know how to tell Candi.  Mom, its zombies.  No, really, they’re zombies. I watched a man eat another man on the street in front of my office.  Then I watched the eaten man get up and bite the paramedics.”

“Victor, get your family safe, then we’ll figure out what this really is.  Do you need to take Max to the doctor?”

“Mom, zombies.  I’m serious.  The doctor is the last place I want to go.  Do you still have the 30/30 and .410?  If you do, go get them and keep them handy.  Lock the doors and don’t answer for anyone.  If they don’t look right, or don’t speak, don’t go near them.”

I heard the garage door opening, and Candi pulling in the garage.

“Mom, I gotta go, Candi is here. Yes mom, I love you too.  See you soon.” I ended the call.