Dawn of the Apocalypse: A Zombie Apocalypse Novel (23 page)

            President Bjorn was big and blonde and looked meaner than shit.  Bjorn looked the part of an outlaw biker, with long hair and beard.  Hell, he could've passed for a murderous Viking raider, especially with that name.  He wore dirty jeans and a sleeve-less jean jacket covered in patches.  A pearl-handled six-shooter was holstered low on his right hip.

            Hell, maybe he wanted to be a cowboy.

            "Dump them right there," Bjorn said, voice so deep he all but rumbled.

            The two men holding my arms thrust me forward, trying to make me fall to my knees.  I struggled, but maintained my feet.  Charlie and Mike fell, but quickly jumped back up.  They moved to either side of me.  We stood defiantly, glaring at him.

            All of our weapons, and both packs with ammo, were put on the tables to either side of President Bjorn.  He raised an eyebrow, and then looked pleased to see the four automatic weapons.  He even picked up the meat cleaver before turning his full attention on us.

            "You killed four of our brothers," Bjorn said, leaning forward and cold gray eyes narrowing.  His big hand tightened around the cleaver's handle.  "And wounded another seven."

            The crowd grumbled and shifted.  I looked them over for the first time.  The vast majority were big, mean looking bikers.  Some were women, ranging from pretty teens to rough looking old women.  I looked at the bikers more closely, and realized a fair number were older men.  And there were a lot of them, too.  My head was still buzzing from the ass-whooping I just took, so estimating their number seemed too tough at the time.

            "We didn't start it," I said.  "All we wanted to do was pass through town peacefully."

            "Yeah, man, you guys came at us with weapons drawn," Mike said.  "We just defended ourselves."

            "You murdered our brothers!"

            "Can we agree to disagree?" Mike said.

            Bjorn stood up.  He was bigger than I originally thought.  The man had to be seven feet tall if he was an inch.  His arms looked as big my legs.

            "Let me handle this," I said before Mike got us killed.  I glanced at our weapons.  So close, yet we'd have to get past a giant to reach them.  "Hey, listen, we don't want trouble.  All we want to do is go home to our families in Georgia."

            "You should've thought about that before killing our brothers."

            The others started moving forward.  I didn't get the impression they wanted to share a group hug.  Charlie and Mike started looking nervous.

            "Take them out into the street and shoot them," Bjorn said.  "Leave the bodies where they fall so the townspeople know not to fuck with us."

            "Are you fucking out of your minds?" I asked.  Bjorn glared at me.  "Listen here, you pig-licking mother fucker, when the US Army returns to reestablish Federal authority, you and your butt-fucking boyfriends will all be strung up for all this crap."

            Bjorn showed his Scandinavian roots.  He turned red, growled, and his temper exploded in violence.  The ginormous biker flipped the high table, sending all of the weapons clattering across the floor.  Everyone surged at us with a cry of rage.

            I must've lost it, too.  I charged Bjorn, while Mike and Charlie kept their heads and jumped on their weapons.  Gunfire erupted, sounding like cannon fire in that enclosed space.

            Picking up a folding chair, I flung it at Bjorn's head.  He smashed it aside with his left arm, while lifting the cleaver high in his right hand.  The biker jumped off the dais at me, so I ducked and plowed through his legs.

            That flipped him over to fall on his back.

            The bastard didn't even grunt with the impact.  Did anything faze him?  I grabbed another folding chair just in time to block the cleaver slash.  Bjorn was on his knees, and still pretty close to my height.  I kicked him in the face, but he just sprung back with a grin.

            Mike shot a grenade point blank. 
BOOM!

            He blew a hole in the wall behind the bikers, knocking quite a few down.  All got back up, but looked dazed, tattered, and bloody.

            My ears rang louder than ever before.  I could barely hear the continuing gunfire.  Charlie was butchering them with the SAW, and Mike helped.  A few of them were frantically returning fire, but since they surrounded us they were shooting each other, too.

           
They watch too many movies
, I thought, noticing the bikers were shooting their pistols sideways like on TV and the movies.  No wonder they couldn't hit shit.

            Bjorn tried to disembowel me as he started to stand.  The cleaver was in his left hand, which I found odd.  Then I noticed his right was unsnapping the strap over the six-shooter.

            "No!" I screamed and slapped the folding chair into the side of his head.

            Bjorn didn't go down, but surged to his feet.  How did such a big man move so fast?

            "Stop!" I screamed.

            No one listened.

            The six-shooter swung around toward Charlie.  I realized since I was unarmed that Bjorn didn't see me as a threat.  Mike and Charlie were definitely threats, well into the process of rendering them all into hamburger meat.  So I charged him with a wild rebel yell.

            My foot lashed out, striking his gun hand in the wrist.  The revolver fired.  It seemed in slow motion, so I saw fire all around the cylinder and the end of the barrel.  Spinning into him, I brought my knee up between his knees.  Bjorn grunted, starting to bend over in agony.  I seized his left wrist, twisted the arm around, and brought my elbow down with all my strength on his elbow.

            "Aaiiee, you bastard!" Bjorn cried, dropping to one knee.  "I'm going to kill you!"

            The six-shoot started swinging back toward me.  I twisted the cleaver out of his hand, gave the dislocated elbow another savage twist, and released.  And then I brought the cleaver down upon his right wrist and took that hand completely off.

            The look on Bjorn's face was incredulous.  Shock.  Disbelief.  He'd probably never lost a fight in his misspent life.  I brought the cleaver back across his face, across his eyes.  He wailed, throwing his head back.  Without hesitation, really without thought, I brought that meat cleaver straight down and split his skull open, wedging the blade in deep.

            "Bjorn is dead!" I shouted.  "Kill them all!"

            That created an exodus.  Not a big rush to the doors, since there weren't that many left, but men and women ran for the front door.  They moved crouched over, continuing to return fire.  Even the women were shooting.

            Suddenly…  Silence.  It was deafening when the guns went silent. 

            "Wow," was all Mike could muster.

            It was just the three of us standing in the middle of the church.  Blood and gore were everywhere.  Big puddles were slowly spreading around every corpse.  The walls were dripping with blood.  There was even blood on those soaring vaulted ceilings.  The air reeked of sulfur, blood, and feces.

            "This is literally a blood bath," Charlie whispered.  "Oh my god."

            I just stood there shaking.  I don't know why I was shaking – emotion, exhaustion, horror – but all I could do was numbly stand there and look around at Hell on Earth.  It didn't help knowing they were one and all very bad people who were going to murder us.

            "What are we going to do now?" Charlie asked.

            "Get the hell out of – " I started, but the front door opened.  "Down!"

            We dropped to the floor, sprawled out and weapons trained on the door.  A gray-haired man came in hesitantly.

            "Hello?  Anyone alive in here?" he said.

            "Halt!  Who are you?" I demanded.

            "M-Mayor Alfred Wilkinson," he said.  "Are you one of the newcomers?"

            I shared a look with Mike and Charlie.  They just shrugged.  That didn't help me any.  So I sighed and slowly rose to my feet.  I motioned for them to remain in position and to cover me.  And then I walked closer to the door and Mayor Wilkinson.  My new position kept me out of Mike and Charlie's line of fire.

            "I'm Roger Gilley, formerly of the US Army," I said, indicating my thoroughly blood-soaked uniform.  "My friends and I just want to pass through without trouble."

            "We're hardly in a position to offer any trouble," Mayor Wilkinson said, moving inside a little more.  He stopped and blanched when his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light.  The scene was pretty damned gruesome, even for a war veteran.  "God have mercy."

            "I don't think Bjorn and friends will give you anymore grief," I said.  "We kind of killed most of them."

            He looked at me with horror in his eyes.  I cringed.

            "What do you want from us?" he asked.

            "Nothing, sir," I said.  "We just want to go home."

            "Um," Mike offered.  "If there's someone in town who could patch or replace our flat tires that would be awesome."

            He looked at Mike, then Charlie.  The mayor stepped deeper into the church, shaking his head.  I thought he'd puke at any second.  He looked that sick.  Finally, he looked me over.

            "Consider it done," he said.  "It'll take a little bit, so you have time to clean up and change."

            "We don't have any changes of clothes," I said.

            "We can take care of that, too," Mayor Wilkinson said.  "It's the least we can do for the men who freed us from the Hell's Soldiers motorcycle gang."

            "A hot meal would be nice, too," Charlie said.  "I mean, if you're taking suggestions."

Chapter 35

            The Meeting House was a flurry of activity for the rest of the day, and well into the night.  The men brought a lot more gas than we had jars to fill.  Indeed, it would take most of the group to carry all of our Molotov Cocktails into battle.  We stuffed as many as we could in any pack found.

            At some point Sean took a few other men and scouted out the mob's campsite.  Around midnight, under a single kerosene lantern, we stood around a table looking at the map.  Everyone was given a position to man above the mob.  Sean's plan was to throw most of the Molotov Cocktails down amongst the mob without lighting them first.

            "Why do that?" I asked.  "Won’t they smell the gas and run away?"

            "I'll be happy if they run away," he said.  "But in truth they won't have time.  It will only take a few minutes to throw all we have down on them."  He paused for dramatic effect.  "All of that gasoline will be evaporating furiously in the heat.  When I throw the last Molotov Cocktail, it will be lit."

            "Boom," Hector said.  "That will be one ginormous explosion."

            "Will it be safe for us?" I asked.

            "Not really," Sean said.  "That's why as soon as each of you finishes throwing your load, get the hell out of Dodge.  I'll wait as long as I can."

            "Will you be all right?" I asked.  He was our main military guy.  Bill might be community leader, but Sean was our general.  Losing him would be a catastrophe.  "Maybe someone else should throw the lit one."

            "No.  I'll do it," he said.  Sean stared off into space a moment.  "Being the one to literally kill hundreds of men, women, and children would be too much of an emotional burden to ask of any of you.  I was, uh, trained to deal with it."

            That's when the magnitude of what we planned hit me.  The fact the mob would happily slaughter us if we failed didn't mitigate the fact we were going to try and kill hundreds, if not thousands of people.  How did soldiers deal with that after war?  I knew Roger had issues stemming from his service, but I was just beginning to understand.

            "We're all already damaged," I whispered.

            No one volunteered to replace Sean in that odious deed.  I certainly wasn't.  My own part in the raid was going to be tough enough to deal with in the near future.  So we gathered up our loads and headed out.

            I had Timmy's Star Wars book bag filled with mason jars of gasoline.  I also carried a jar in each hand.  My only other weapon was the 9mm on my hip.  Only a few managed to carry a rifle or shotgun.  Our sole purpose was to splatter gallons of gasoline all over the mob.

            Sean, Hector, and Bill each took a team.  I was on Hector's team.  The team leaders' job was to place each of us in our assigned post.  Those were the spots above the mob that provided the best chance of throwing our jars in a good "shot pattern."  We wanted to splatter as many of them as possible.

            I tried not to think about what we were about to do.  I couldn't imagine a worse way to die.  The closer to that moment of fate we came, the more I trembled.  For a moment I wasn't sure I'd be able to throw my jars.

            From my post high above the road, I could see countless shapes curled up in sleep.  My post was at the top edge of the mob, so I couldn't even see the main body on the level ground further down the road.  To my left was Hector.  To my right Paul.

            I placed my pack full of death on the ground and unzipped it.  And then waited.  I didn't have to wait long.  When I saw Hector start throwing his jars, I began throwing mine.  The sound of breaking glass filled the air, followed by crowd noises.  People started shouting, then screaming.  The mob suddenly surged down the road, trying to escape certain death.

            I grabbed my empty pack once I was done and started back up toward the Meeting House.  Gunfire erupted down below.  Bullets hit the ground all around me.  I heard Hector gasp.  My breath caught when he fell straight back down the mountain.  A second later their gunfire ignited the gas.