Books of the Dead (Book 3): Dead Man's Land (24 page)

A new shot rang out, and a bullet slammed into the back fender.  Russell whipped his rifle’s aim to the location of the muzzle flash and fired off three quick shots. 

“GO!” he yelled.

Kara pressed the gas pedal down, yanked the wheel hard to the left, and drove toward an open meadow, past the now gone-to-seed golf course. She watched in the rearview mirror as Russell got smaller and smaller.

Chapter 32

Setting the Scene for the Final Act

I took an oblique angle toward the north side of the ridge. The Lord of the Dead’s vehicles were clearly visible now. A couple dozen armored zombies stood in place, silent sentinels awaiting a command from their evil overlord. It made me wonder if this guy wore a long black cape and glowered a lot. Maybe he even laughed in a deep and ominous tone.

The zombies concerned me, but my focus was on the vehicles. I wondered if every vehicle had a transmitter or only a select few did. I took a moment to examine all of them closely, looking for any sign that they had a transmitter. After several seconds, I finally saw something – elaborate antennas on the front cab of two of the semi-trailers and a similar one on both sides of the buses. These weren’t CB radio antennas, but something more sophisticated, sticking up above the reach of the trailers. 

I double-clicked the talk button on my walkie-talkie twice in succession and waited.

Travis came back about three seconds later, talking in a whisper, “I’m just about in position. What do you need?”

“Two of the semis have antennas,” I said.  “I’m guessing they have transmitters.  Same for the two buses.  As of right now, I don’t see any humans in the area, but I’m guessing that there are people on the buses.  I’m going to take out the semis, and that should distract them.  You can use that as your chance to come up with the grenades. You ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he whispered back.

“Ready or not, be prepared for some fireworks,” I said and went to stow my walkie-talkie, when a new voice came from the speaker.

“Joel, this is Kara.  Joel, if you’re there, please speak to me.”

I pressed the talk button and asked, “What is it, Kara?”  My hands were shaking. This couldn’t be good news. 

“Joel, we’re out,” Kara said.  “Well, most of us are out. Jo and Brother Ed are still inside.  We ran out of room.” Her voice sounded strained.  “Russell had to stay behind to protect us, too.”

I didn’t have any words. I knew this was a possibility, but facing it was a whole different ballgame.

“Did Aaron get out?” I asked, not really wanting to know.
              “He didn’t make it to the dock,” she responded.

I closed my eyes and stood there in silence for a moment.

“Are you still there?” 

“Yes,” I said, “but Madison and Naveen are with you, right?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And Jason?”

“Yes.”

That was a great relief, but also brought little consolation. We were losing so much.  Too much.

“Okay,” I said, “you need to keep driving. One of us will contact you if it’s safe for you to return. If you don’t hear from us, keep driving.  Head east.  You know where to go.”

“We’ll see you back here,” she said.

“I sure hope so,” I said, “and now, please just keep driving, no more farewells, okay?  They’ll break me.”

“Okay,” she said, trying to put as much positive energy into her words as she could, “we’ll see you soon.”

“Gotta go,” I said and pocketed the walkie-talkie.

I picked up the RPG launcher and opened the pack with the three warheads. There was no margin for error if we wanted to take out all the transmitters. I loaded the first one up, trying to remember all the steps that Greg had taken us through when he trained us on how to fire these damn things. I wished I had paid better attention. It seemed simple: insert Part A into Part B, pull Part C and wham-bam, thank you, ma’am, you had an explosion.  Still, I fumbled with the warhead for a couple seconds until it clicked into place. I brought the RPG up to my shoulder and aimed it at the semis, trying to decide which one to fire on. 

I knew I had better be more strategic than random selection, so, just to be safe, I picked the outside one. I locked in my aim and knew the moment of truth was upon me.  I said a silent prayer with my eyes still open and then pulled the trigger.

There was an extremely loud explosion next to my ear, followed by a whooshing sound. A couple milliseconds later, the truck I had aimed at exploded in a ball of flame.  A large plume of smoke erupted from the impact with parts of metal and glass flying out of it.  When the smoke cleared, I saw that the truck cab was fully engulfed in flames.

Score one for Joel, I thought.  I knew how to bring down the house.

Anthony thought,
What the hell was that?

He snapped his head around and saw smoke rising from one of the trucks, quickly followed by flames.  His eyes darted over the field, looking for an attacker, but saw no one.  They had to be using a rocket launcher or something. This thought chilled him, because that left him very, very vulnerable. He had hoped that the worse they had were grenades.  No, this wasn’t a good sign at all.  He remembered all too well being trapped on a burning bus: the choking smoke, the searing flames, and the burning.  His sense memory came alive with the thoughts of his flesh heating up, feeling as if someone were tearing into him and ripping it off, a piece at a time with a superheated pair of pliers. 

His fingers shook, but he tamped down the panic and went back to work. He was too close to his goal to let his fear take him. He turned his attention to unlocking the cage and tried to keep thoughts of burning alive on the bus out of his mind, but like a flame, the thoughts still flickered in the distance.

The lock came loose, and he slowly pulled the cage door open.

He extended a hand and said, “Come out. my little ones. It’s time to go to work.”

Success! That was how I felt as I watched the truck burn. Of course, this sense of accomplishment was quickly tempered by the idea that there was still a shitload of zombies attacking our home base and five more vehicles to deal with.  In other words, I knew we were far from hanging up a mission-accomplished banner. 

I looked out into the field and saw a large group of zombies stop in place, as if someone had pulled out their power cords.  They stood motionless, awaiting the next compelling command, but none came. 

While those were stopped dead (no pun intended), there were still hordes of them assaulting the complex. The fire that had been on the third floor of the main building had spread to the second and was burning unabated. 

Despite my momentary happiness about taking out one of the trucks, my heart sank as I watched our safe haven going up in flames.  First the church, now the Manor.  It was getting to be too much.

I wondered if there was any redemption in the human race. With a common threat, we should have banded together to save the species from extinction. But it seemed the exact opposite was the case.  What little amount of living, breathing humans left in this undead world fought and struggled for dominion over the same things we had always fought about in the past - land, power, and food.  I contemplated the flood of Noah’s time and felt as if I now had some idea of how God felt before He brought down the rains.   

Russell watched the truck drive up the long and gently sloping hill that led to safety and felt very lonely and exposed on his own. He turned his attention back to the woods, where the shots had come from, and saw a shadowy figure standing back from the tree line, aiming a rifle at the escaping vehicle. The figure was about seventy-five yards away and fired off several shots.  A couple bullets pinged off the back of the truck, sending sparks into the air.

Russell aimed and fired, not considering that he was out in the open and an easy target.  His anger overtook any logic or thoughts of self-preservation. This bastard was trying to kill his friends, and he would have to pay. 

His bullets quickly got the attention of the attacker, but none hit home. The attacker swiveled and let loose with a rip of his own bullets. Russell’s self-preservation instinct finally kicked in, and he threw himself face down on to the ground. He heard bullets whiz over his head, and a couple kicked dirt into his face, as the attacker corrected his aim.

Russell knew he had better return fire or else he was dead meat. He remained prone, but rose up onto his elbows, brought his rifle up, and clicked off a couple shots. The figure ducked, but didn’t go down.  Because Russell was more in panic mode, he knew his first shots weren’t really aimed, so he took a deep calming breath and targeted the last place he had seen the figure. He fired off two more shots and waited. There was no movement in the woods where he was aiming

Afraid to stand or move, Russell trained his rifle on the trees and waited, the muscles in his arms starting to bind up because of the tension. A clattering noise sounded off to his right, and he learned the attacker was, indeed, still alive.  Moaning their guttural noises, a group of around ten armored zombies had broken from the pack on the southeast corner of the complex and started shambling his way. He had some time because of their slow movement, but he knew he couldn’t stay there forever. The problem was that as soon as he stood, he’d stick out so blatantly he might as well paint a target on his chest. 

Russell felt his sweat turn from hot to cold, waiting for the hammer to fall. The moans and metal clanking noises got closer. The zombies’ metal enhanced forms looked even more frightening from his perspective on the ground. 

The culmination of all this fell onto him, and he realized that he was about to die if he didn’t do something.  A bad line from an old movie hit him, “it was better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”  For some unknown reason, this caused him to laugh, his breaths kicking up dust on the ground.  He started with small chuckles at first, but he quickly found himself caught in a belly laugh .  This went on for at least twenty seconds, until he had to reach up and clear the tears out of his eyes. 

A voice came from the shadowy darkness of the trees, “What the fuck are you laughing about?”

While this did put a slight damper on his laugh fest, he still felt an absurd giddiness overtake him.  “Maybe it’s because I’m about to kill you, you son of a bitch,” he said.

“You and whose army, asshole?” the voice asked.

“I don’t need an army,” Russell responded.  “It’s just me and you.”

“And those zombies coming down on you.”

Russell focused himself, reducing his world down to his eyes and his ears.  “You want to know something?” He asked in a shout.

“What?” the voice replied.

“You talk too much,” Russell shouted and pulled the trigger. 

He had isolated the source of the voice coming from behind a large oak, just a few feet off the edge of the grass line.  He knew there was no way to hit his man, but he had to keep him pinned down and out of sight.  He adjusted his fire, first shooting one side of the tree and then the other side, with some of his bullets flying past the tree and into the woods.
That was okay
, he thought.  He just needed the man to stay behind the tree long enough for him to get up and start moving.  That was a long run, but, when it came down to it, he knew he had no other choice. It was death by being shot or death by being ripped apart by zombies.  Neither option seemed too good.

As soon as his rifle was empty, he discarded it and leapt to his fee, starting a dead out sprint toward the tree.  As he ran, he retrieved his .45 from his waistband and held it out in front of his body, aiming it at the tree. He knew his aim was shaking like a can of paint in a paint shaker, but it would have to do.  It didn’t matter as he pounded his way toward the tree. He only hoped his all-out barrage would be enough to keep whoever it was behind the tree, hunkered down and afraid to peek around it for fear he’d get his face shot off.

That’s what Russell hoped. It seemed a long, long distance away as he felt his throat go dry.

Chapter 33

The Final Act

Strangely, there was no overt movement from any of the other vehicles. I let my glance slide from the remaining two trucks to the two buses. I don’t know what I expected: maybe a swarm of vampire bats or a line of dancing girls.  None of the above showed up.

I looked over my shoulder, to the stilled zombies in the field, and an amazing transformation took place as they went from statues to moving again. The group split in half, with one part moving toward the complex, and the other part coming straight at me. 

Staying where I was seemed like a bad idea.  While they weren’t speedy, they would be on me in a few minutes if I stayed in place. I cautiously moved forward and went to one knee as I loaded the next warhead. It clicked into place and brought the launcher up into the firing position.  With an inspired new confidence, I locked on the next truck with an antenna and let the missile fly. 

It met with the same spectacular success as the first one, with the front of the truck exploding in a blossom of flames.  They licked out and started in on the trailer.   The paint on the trailer began to blister and turn brown and then black as the flames rode their way from the front to the back.

Just like before, the zombies in the field stopped in place.  This didn’t last long and it was as if someone had wound them back up and released the switch as they went into motion.  I looked and saw past the zombies in the field, a large group of zombies at the back of the complex still motionless.  It looked as if taking out two transmitters was having some effect, after all.   At least, that’s what I hoped.

Eager to take out the buses, I turned away from the field and saw Travis in the distance.  He slowly crossed the meadow behind the vehicles.  He was over a football field away, so I couldn’t catch every detail, but he looked to have his pistol in one hand, something else in the other and his rifle over his shoulder.  I could only guess that the other object was one of the grenades. 

The zombies directly in front of the buses started into motion again.  A set of them came in my direction, while a group of five shambled around the front of the bus and toward Travis. 

So much for stealth.  Whoever was controlling them knew we were there.

That didn’t matter, though.  We had brought the big guns, and it was time to shut down their show.   
              The doors on the bus farthest to the south opened.  There was nothing but shadows; then, I caught some movement.  Inside the folding door, a small figure appeared, veiled in the darkness.  It nearly stumbled out, but caught itself by putting out a steadying hand.  It was a child.  It stepped down onto the ground tentatively and just stood there for a moment, looking lost.  After a few seconds, it let out a small yelp and jumped slightly into the air.  Something urged it to move again as it hopped out of the space in front of the bus door.  Another child appeared in the doorway and came down the steps.  Both of the children wore yellow collars around their necks and had on backpacks.  And both of them looked scared out of their minds.  A third child stepped into the doorway and made its way down the steps.  They huddled together, as if there was strength in numbers, but something told me that was miles from the truth.

I felt my stomach tighten and a tremor of unease settle in.

As soon as the last child’s feet touched the ground, a voice came across the speaker of the walkie-talkie I retrieved from the Lord of the Dead’s minion, “You out there,” There was pause, “the one who is blowing up my trucks?  Are you going to kill these innocent children, too?”

Now, I knew I was dealing with true evil. 

Russell watched the tree intently as he ran toward the woods.  Something popped around the right side of the tree, and he yanked his pistol in that direction, firing off two quick shots as he continued running.  He was down to twenty-five yards.  His heart felt as if it were about to pound out of his chest.

A head popped out the left side of the tree trunk, and Russell fired on it. The head pulled back. Russell was down to fifteen yards. He just had to make it those last few feet.

This whole ploy depended on keeping the person behind the tree locked in place. If he came out from behind the tree, he would have Russell out in the open field, ripe for picking.   

Russell hit the ten-yard line and felt confident that he would make it. Running at full tilt, he hit the five-yard marker and realized that he was about to smack into a tree. At the last instant, he pulled up and half-slid, half-fell into the side of the tree.

His lungs burned as they screamed for more oxygen. He gulped down air as he jerked his head from side to side, waiting for his attacker to step around the tree at any moment. Russell realized that the two of them were stuck in a deadly stalemate, but he was at a disadvantage, because his enemy had allies. 

Russell looked out onto the field at the on-coming zombies.  They seemed a lot closer than they were before, but zombies have been known to have that effect on people.  Even at their glacially slow pace, Russell estimated he now had more than two minute before they would be on him, and he would have nowhere to go. Time was not on his side, and his options were limited -- get shot or get eaten.  Neither were savory choices.

Think, think, think,
Russell chided himself.

The zombies clattered and moaned. Russell heard the attacker shifting around on the other side of the tree. Russell knew then he’d have to make his own luck. 

Searching for any inspiration, he reached into his pants pocket, and his hand gripped onto a spare clip - his last one. He realized that he’d left the rest in the truck. He
did
have three clips for his rifle, but a lot of good that did him, since he’d left the rifle in the field. He pulled the clip out and examined it for a moment. 

The zombies were about fifty feet away and closing. The man on the side of the tree knew that he held the best hand and just had to wait for it to play out.

It took Russell a moment, but he finally came to a conclusion that the man on the other side of the tree didn’t know what Russell was carrying. Russell could have had a nuclear warhead as far as the guy knew. He came up with a plan and hoped he could pull it off.

“Hey, you,” Russell shouted.

The man remained silent.

“I think you’d better give yourself up.”

“What the hell are you smoking over there?” a voice asked from behind the tree.  “I got your ass dead to rights. It’s I shoot you, or my zombies get you. It’s you that should be surrendering.”

“But what if I had a little surprise for you?” Russell asked.

“Like what?  A fucking magic wand?” 

“No,” Russell said, still holding the clip in his left hand, “but what about a grenade?”

Russell took that moment to act, tossing the clip around the tree with his left hand and stepping to his right.  The clip bounced into a pile of dried leaves on the other side of the tree and a split second later, a burly man with dark curly hair jumped right into the place where Russell aimed his pistol. Russell didn’t hesitate and pulled the trigger three times.

The bullets exploded out the barrel and flew fast and true. 

The man’s expression was one of surprise and regret as the bullets struck him in the chest.  The control panel, with its field of buttons, broke into pieces as the bullets smashed through the thin plastic and into the man’s body. The man came off his feet, dropping his rifle, and fell back into the dry leaves, where he ended up on his back, hands limp at his sides. 

He didn’t die immediately, but lay there, gasping for breath as one of his lungs collapsed.  He coughed, and a bubble of blood burst from his mouth, coating his lips. 

Russell moved over the man’s body, still aiming his pistol downward. He studied the man and quickly realized that it wasn’t his Lord of the Dead. This man was only a lackey, and that frustrated Russell for a few seconds, but he consoled himself with the idea that he was still alive and his friends had escaped. It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do.

In a breathy voice, the man said, “You tricked me.”

“Yeah, I did.”  Russell let that hang in the air for a couple seconds.  “You would have killed me and all my friends.  I’d do whatever I had to take you out.”

The man’s lips moved, but no sound came forth.  His lips stopped moving after a few seconds and he took two labored breaths and then no more.

Russell looked over his shoulder into the field to check on the progress of the zombies that were chasing him.  They had stopped in their tracks.  They weren’t totally motionless, but they were no longer in pursuit. 

This puzzled him, but he didn’t have any answers and no time to search for them.  He was one man versus an army of the undead.  The odds were
not
in his favor if he didn’t do what he always did -- which was run.  He had faced down one enemy and lived to fight another day.  That would have to do.

He took the man’s rifle, which lay in the dried leaves and retrieved his clip, then headed into the woods away from the dead and undead. 

He made it about thirty yards into the woods when he ran into a small mob of zombies, coming toward the complex, drawn in by the sound of the battle.  None of these zombies wore the control collars.  These were just your run-of-the-mill rogue zombies, but just as deadly without armor.  He tried to find a way around them by moving in a wide arc through the woods, but he found he was blocked at every path.  Eventually, he was forced to turn around.  He had seen some big mobs of zombies back in the city, but this was a monster horde and he knew nothing good would come of them.  He also factored his chances of survival if he coudn’t get around them and figured he had little chance.  He wanted nothing more than to try to catch up to Kara and the others, but he knew that ship had sailed.  He was forced to go back the way he came, making sprints from tree-to-tree, barely escaping the notice of the oncoming zombies.  He pushed through the bushes and brambles and came out at the edge of the field.  He was back where started -- back at The Manor. 

It was time for a heroic last stand
, he thought as he started into the field and back to his new, and maybe, last home.

              Travis made slow, but steady progress on the backside of the bus.  I, on the other hand, was locked in place, frozen by fear and indecision about what to do next.  Just moments before, the plan had been simple.  I pointed the rocket launcher; I aimed, I fired.  It was all over in an instant.

Now, the tables had been turned so quickly and radically that I felt as if my world was spinning.  A wave of vertigo swept over me and I staggered a single step to my left. 

With those kids standing in front of the bus, there was no way I could fire on it without hurting or killing them. 

As I stood there, trying to decide what to do next, one of the children, a small boy of no more than six or seven, cried out and reached up to the collar around his neck.  Two seconds later, he fell to his knees and screamed.  A voice carried from the bus, but I was too far away to make out what it said.  The boy slowly stood, trudged around the front of the bus and stood in the field where Travis was approaching. 

My walkie-talkie came to life and Travis said, “Who are these kids?”

I retrieved my walkie-talkie and said, “He’s using them as human shields.”

“What?”

“Whoever’s in the bus has two more kids on my side,” I said.  “I don’t have a shot on the bus as long as they’re in the picture.”

“What are we going to do?”

I had no idea, but whoever the evil bastard in the bus was, he started making choices for us.  Three of the armored zombies on my side of the bus started in my direction and four started around the front of the bus toward Travis.  They clanked and clattered along like robotic versions of the undead, but were nonetheless just as deadly, if not more so, than the conventional models.

“Can we get the kids to run to us?” Travis asked.

“They’re wearing those damned shock collars.  He’d shock them,” I said.

“Can we get to them?”
              “We’d have to get past the undead and also hope he doesn’t shoot us.”

“I’m going to make a run for the kid at the back and seei
f
I can get the collar off,” Travis said.  He was braver than I was. 

“I’ll cover you, but give me a second.  I’m going to take out that second bus and maybe that will give you some cover,” I pulled up my rocket launched and sighted in on the second bus, hoping that none of the kids would be hurt when I fired.  It was a calculated risk, but I knew I had to do it if my people had any chance.  As soon as I was confident I had the bus targeted in, I pulled the trigger.  Just like before, the rocket hissed out of the launcher and less than a second later, the bus exploded into a fireball. 

I quickly looked to the two kids standing beside the bus, finding both of them cowered down.  A little girl in soiled and tattered clothing, frightened by the blast, broke and ran.  She didn’t make it fifteen feet before the man inside the bus cut her down. 

She let out a horrible high pitched scream and fell backwards as if someone had yanked her back with a rope.  Whatever intense pain she was suffering took away her voice as she bucked and rolled on the ground in agony.