Beyond the Barriers (Novella): Ghouls (22 page)

Craig and Roz sat to the side to watch the Z’s gather. Roz sat down and touched her fingers to her forehead, then down to her chest, and then side to side while muttering something about el Diablo.

“How’d you even get up here?”

Joel pointed at his entrenching tool and then looked at the house. They’d come out through the roof, jumped the couple of feet that separated the buildings and then gotten us out.

Christy popped out of the hole in the house a few seconds later and slung a couple of backpacks onto the roof. She took a deep breath and pulled herself up. Craig made the three-foot leap onto the home and helped her cross.

They both joined us and collapsed in a heap.

“I got what I could but they broke into the house.”

“All that food and water,” Roz said and shook her head.

“At least we’re still alive.” I tried to sound cheerful but it was cut off by the moans of the dead. A shuffler threw itself at the side of the garage and fell into the crowd below.

“Yeah. This is terrific.” Joel said.

Joel had managed to make it out of the house with his assault rifle. He sat with it cradled in his arms.

The ocean of the dead stretched around us until they covered the ground in every direction.

S
upplies
:

• Food: zip
  
• Weapons: almost zip
  

The roof. The roof. The roof is surrounded by the fucking dead. We just need a fire to make the mother....you get the idea.

I’m not much for long speeches. After a while all of the words sort of run into each other and become a drone. Joel Kelly also wasn’t a fan of long speeches and beat me to it with this perfect summary: “We are so fucked.”

You’d think a Marine would have a little more dignity or some words of wisdom. If John Wayne was playing the part of a Marine at Anzio and the enemy surrounded our little group of survivors, I’m sure he’d have some powerful words for the troops. Big words about glory and how it’s a fighter’s duty to destroy the bad guys.

Our troops just lowered their heads and hid. It wasn’t hard. Since full dark we’d tried to sleep. The effort was there, but I had sand paper in my eyes from listening to the moans all night.

The house was full of dead. The garage was packed with the dead. The area around us as far as the eye could see was surrounded by the dead. So many dead it was like an ocean. They were out there in their rotted masses really stinking up the place. They groaned, moaned, and snarled. Christy lay on her side and tried to muffle them out with her hands. Craig stared back at them defiantly. That’s what a kid’s bravado is good for, right there. I had no such illusions.

“How did this mess happen?” Roz asked. She was covered in sweat and blood – not her own blood, but that of her dad and the Z’s that had chased us into the garage. I’d shot a shuffler in mid-leap and blood had splattered liberally. It was probably the single best shot I’d made in my week in the city and no one even saw it. I should get a fucking medal for that blast. I settled for being alive.

“At least we're alive.” I said. I got a whole pat on the hand for that.

“Why don’t we sneak back into the house? Close the door. Lock it. Then we kill all the zombies. We’ll be safe then,” Christy whispered.

Girl didn’t realize that we couldn’t just take our chances like that. One bite was all it took.

“Will that work?” Craig asked and flipped one of the shufflers the bird.

“Not a chance.” I broke the bad news. “We’d probably all die trying.”

The shuffler hissed at Craig. He sniffed the air, looked at his slower moving brethren, and then put his hand in his mouth and bit off a finger.

The Z’s left him alone while he chewed on his own digit.

Craig lay back down, so I did the same. Maybe if we stayed out of sight long enough the Z’s would lose interest and wander away.

“Why do they do that?” Craig asked quietly.

“Why do they do what?”

“Act like they’re afraid of the crawly dudes.”

“The slow ones?” I asked.

“Yeah. They even act like they understand the weird ones.”

“We call them shufflers.”

“Shuffler? Like they deal cards?”

“No. On account of that shuffle step they use when they walk. It’s like a stuttering motion they can’t control. We thought they were running around on broken bones or maybe weren’t fully turned or some shit.”

“Watch your language around the kids,” Roz warned.

“Language?” I blinked.

“Doesn’t bother me, dude,” Craig said.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Seventeen.”

“Probably has worse language than me.”

“Dad was in the Navy,” Craig said and looked away.

“I’m in the Navy too. It’s cool. What did your Dad do?”

“Something with weapons systems.”

“Good for him. I bet he had air conditioning.” I thought of spending hours and hours in the hundred-degree engine room.

“Shh.” Roz shot me a look.

I sighed and patted Craig’s hand.

“Sorry, man. I hope your Dad’s okay.”

“Me too,” he said.

I sighed and slipped my logbook out of the backpack that Christy had retrieved from the house, then dug around until I found a beat up pen.

Joel had pulled his NYFD hat over his eyes and snored gently. He was so quiet I couldn’t even hear him over the moans of the dead below. How did he sleep in this living hell?

“What’s that?” Craig asked me.

“The only thing keeping me sane,” I said and set pen to paper to write about how we had escaped the base.

* * *

W
eapons
:

• 2 fully automatic assault rifles
  
• Enough magazines to make them count
  
• 1 Colt 1911 .45
  
• 22 Rounds of .45 ammo
  
• 1 Heckler and Koch MP5-N sub machine gun
  
• 1 large knife
  
• 1 vey large wrench
  

I’ve heard a lot of situations described as clusterfucks. I’ve used the term a number of times myself. Generally the word had a lot of meanings, but this was the best example I’d come across yet.

We’d been back on the base for a few hours and all we’d managed to do was run, hide, and shoot a bunch of people that were acting crazed. I know now it was the damn virus that caused the zombie apocalypse but I didn’t know it then. If I’d had any clue, I might have done the smart thing and jumped back into the ocean, then would’ve swam until my legs gave out. With any luck, a killer whale would choke on my sorry white ass.

We’d just run from a barricade that covered multiple streets. There were dead all over the fucking place and it seemed like every one of them had a bead on us. Joel Kelly moved out on point while Reynolds brought up the rear. I stayed in the middle and tried not to trip on anything. Joel used fancy hand signals; after a while, I thought I’d caught on and knew when to stop, when to crouch, when to crawl, and when to haul ass like I was running from a fire.

We came to another cross street that used to lead to a few fast food restaurants. Bodies on the ground. So many bodies. We crouched at the corner of a building and a street missing a signpost. The whole thing had been run over and was tangled in a heap of twisted metal that used to be car. Now that car was a burned out husk filled with bodies. Must have been a family of six. They were all dead, but still smoking. I gagged at the smell.

Joel grabbed the front of my jump suit and dragged me away.

We rounded a corner and ran smack into a band of them. They turned white eyes on us and commenced with snarling and moaning like a bunch of wild animals. Reynolds shot the nearest one in the chest and then his rifle jammed. Joel tapped him on the shoulder, so he fell back while Joel provided covering fire.

Reynolds worked his gun and then came up shooting. He moved backwards as Kelly also fell back, and then we were on the run again.

We dove into what used to be a fast food restaurant. The place was deserted and trash had been hauled out and scattered all over the floor. A bag of sesame seed buns was split open but covered in blood. I was so hungry I considered rooting around until I found one that hadn’t been splattered.

“Think they have food here?”

“Fuck if I know. Sweep the kitchen.” Joel nodded at Reynolds.

Joel went low but peeked out a window. The others had been broken out so he avoided those. I stayed next to him while Reynolds moved into the other room. He came back a few seconds later and shook his head.

Joel moved toward him but Reynolds shook his head once again.

“Shit,” Joel said and followed Reynolds.

“What?” I asked.

“You don’t want to know.”

“You really don’t,” Reynolds said and moved ahead.

“I want to go on record as saying I hate this.”

“Yeah, yeah. Quit whining and man up so we can get away from this hellhole.”

“Think the cities any better?” I asked.

“Can it be worse?”

He had a point.

We moved out of the building and slid past a small store next door. The entire front had been shot to hell. There was a pile of bodies out front and most didn’t twitch. Joel scouted and then held out his hand before crossing in front of it.

“Friendlies!” he said in a low voice. He looked back at us once and then dashed across the field of fire of whoever might be manning a gun inside.

No one shot at him, so we stayed low and followed.

We sprinted to the end of the street and then paused next to a burned out bus. It was white, but flames had turned the outside into shades of black. Soot stuck to my back when I slammed against it. Something fell out of a smashed window and grabbed my neck.

I dropped and let out a little scream of horror. Joel looked from me to the hand and smirked. I followed his eyes and got a look at my assailant. It was a hand, all right, but it was covered in blackened flesh.

“Fuck this,” I muttered.

Then the hand twitched.

I could have just leapt right out of my skin but managed to hang onto my sanity by a thread. Fingers moved, grasping at nothing, then they went still again.

We pressed on and found ourselves near an administrative building. Shapes moved behind dark windows.

The place looked familiar and I thought it might have been some kind of processing center for those shipping out to new commands.

“Be ready,” Reynolds said.

“Who’s in there?”

“Not sure,” he said. “But they probably aren’t friendly.”

We crouched behind a car and went over our weapons. Joel popped his magazine and checked it while Reynolds did the same. Joel laid out an extra mag and then came up in a crouch.

“If they rush us, shoot the first few, then we move. They aren’t the fastest things, so we should be able to make it across the street.”

“You guys move. I’ll cover,” Reynolds said.

Luckily, we didn’t have to turn the street into a bloodbath.

A pair of guys in green moved out of the building. They had guns like Joel and looked like they knew how to use them. Reynolds looked over the side of the car and then grinned. He whistled once and then put a hand in the air.

The guys snapped to and aimed guns at us. From my vantage point, looking through the remains of a blown out window, I feared they were going to start shooting and ask questions later.

Reynolds held his gun in the air and then rose slowly. Joel did the same.

“Good to see someone’s alive,” one of the guys said.

We moved on the soldiers’ position. Other guys in green filed out of the building. Joel Kelly and Reynolds nodded at them and they nodded back. They went into this weird dance where they looked each other’s gear up and down, then exchanged this and that. I saw at least two magazines swapped out for other magazines. Rounds were checked and counted out. Someone handed Kelly a pack that looked like food. He tossed it to me then took one for himself.

“You guys with the eight?” one of the other soldiers asked.

“We just got here,” Reynolds said.

We’d moved back into the building the guys had just vacated and crouched in the remains of an overturned trashcan. There were quite a few blood splatters but no bodies, for a change. Not even any parts of bodies.

“What?” One of the guys looked them over. He had steel grey eyes and looked like what an action hero should look like.

“We just got here, Gunny. We were on the McClusky before it rammed into the base.”

“I saw that. Damn shame.”

“What’s going on here?” Joel asked.

“It’d take days to tell you. Something’s been hitting cities and bases. The first we heard about it was up north around the Portland area. I guess some Black Water types brought back something besides crotch rot from the desert. At least, that’s the rumor.”

Joel stared at the man like he was looking at a ghost.

“What was it?” Reynolds asked.

“Don’t know.  Rumors about some new weapon we were experimenting with.”

“Bullshit,” Joel stated. “I was over there and those guys don’t have the tech.”

“True, and don’t that make you wonder who does have the tech?”

“But what are we even talking about? This shit. All this fucking shit. It’s like a horror movie.” Joel gestured around.

“Yeah, it’s some shit. We’re getting off the base. Chain of command is stuck in limbo. Stay, fight, run, fight. We’re tired of taking orders from fifteen people so we’re getting gone. You guys want in?” Gunny looked us over. “Who’s he?”

They meant me. Did I really stick out that much?

“I’m Petty Officer First Class Creed. Jackson Creed.”

Reynolds and Kelly followed my lead and gave introductions.

“A squid? Shit.”

“Yeah. I know what you mean. I’d trade all my valuable knowledge of making a ship go fast for some combat training right about fucking now,” I said, and there was a lot of truth behind those words.

“Well, you’re big and you carry a big stick. Sometimes that’s all it takes.” Gunny nodded at the wrench in my hand. “How many rounds you got?”

“I don’t know. A pocketful and one extra clip.”

“Lesson number one, squid. It’s called a magazine. A clip is what a girl puts in her hair. You a girl?”

Jesus Christ. I’d been recruited into the Marines and this was boot.