El Paso Under Attack - 01 (25 page)

“How were you able to get them through the gates with all the zombies out there?” I asked.

“I had me some target practice,” answered Georgie proudly.

“Anybody infected?”

“It’s been dealt with,” said Tito.

I wanted to ask more, but I decided against it. I didn’t want to hear the details.

“
Were you concerned?
”

Yeah, I was, but at the moment there were too many people patting me on the back and shaking my hand. Some of them were even trying to take pictures with me. I didn’t want to hear the details of how they dealt with the unfortunate infected, the end result is always the same.

“
Death.
”

Yeah, death…I’d had enough death for a little while. It was time to relax. It was time to prepare for the next stage. There was also more death in my future. Maybe even mine.

“
So you relaxed until sunset?
”

I tried, wasn’t much relaxing to be had. Mostly, I just hung out with all the survivors and had a couple of beers.

“
What happened with the others that were in the Jeep?
”

Merrick, Dudley and Kingsley went back to Georgie’s and crashed out. Jen disappeared with I don’t know who, and Calvin and Tito started talking. I almost warned Tito about Calvin being an asshole, but I figured that Tito would figure it out on his own in a short while.

Sometime before sunset I changed my clothes to jeans, a white t-shirt and some combat boots. I didn’t have much choice in the whole changing clothes thing. My previous clothes were filthy, smelly and torn all to hell. I left all my gear at Georgie’s except for my rifle and headed over to the gates for some target practice.

I would have liked to have gotten a shower, but a sudden wave of zombies came rushing at the gate. Time for a shower would hopefully come later; at least that was what I was hoping.

It took the rest of the day, but as soon as we handled the zombies at the gate with some help from the guards, Georgie and I headed back to his house to have that meeting.

It was kinda cool being on the gate and shooting the zombies. A pretty big crowd had gathered to watch. Every time I brought one of them down, a massive cheer rose out over the safe zone. Georgie and I had a competition over who could bring down the most.

“
Who won?
”

I did, by five.

“
How did it feel to have all those people cheering for you?
”

I felt like a rock star. I’ve never had a run in with fame before. It was kinda fun. I mean…I wish it was under more pleasant circumstances and all, but it was still kinda fun.

I think Georgie was enjoying the run off as well.

“
Run off?
”

Yeah, since he and I have been pals for over ten years, he was getting a lot of attention as well. Also, Georgie can be a pretty funny guy most of the time. He’s not always the pain in the ass that I described earlier. Most of the time, he’ll have you in stitches.

Both of us were somewhat reluctant to head back to Georgie’s house, but the meeting needed to be held.

“
Who came to the meeting?
”

Georgie, Merrick, Tito, Dudley, Kingsley, Ivana, Lucy, Jen (for some reason) and I, Calvin tried to get in the meeting with Tito, but Dudley grabbed him by the collar and tossed him out the front door.

“
Because you didn’t like him?
”

Nobody liked him.

Once again, the bully in me joins in on the laughter.

“What happened at the meeting?
”

The first thing I did, with a little help from Dudley was tell them everything that happened down town. They weren’t happy to hear about all the zombies headed our way.

“
I can imagine that they weren’t. What did they say?
”

Just what you’d expect.

“Why the hell would you lead them to us Jax?” asked Tito.

“Because, by the time they get here, why aren’t going to be here,” I answered. “We’re leaving tomorrow.”

“That’s impossible,” said Georgie. “I did the research that you asked me to do. Every exit in and out of El Paso is now fenced in with a ten foot high chain link fence that runs a mile wide on each side of the road. After that, the military has patrols moving in hummers around all the open areas. They’re ordered to shoot anything trying to move out of El Paso between the fences.”

“How many hummers?” I asked.

“A lot, enough to cover the open areas and then some, they aren’t taking any chances. There haven’t been any escapes either. Rumor has it, that a lot of civilians have been shot as well.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I mumbled. “It wouldn’t only be the zombies trying to get out, I’m sure that some of the survivors tried to make a break for it as well. There’s a lot of desert between the borders, they probably thought they could make it without being discovered.”

“Well, they didn’t,” said Georgie. “The military has a lot of toys that can detect that sort of thing.”

“How does the public feel about all this?” asked Dudley. “Hard to believe they aren’t freaking out.”

“They are…but, they can’t prove anything yet. So far, the military has kept all civilians far away from the borders and the open space in between. Only a few reporters have managed to get any kind of footage.”

“What kind of footage?” I asked.

“One that was real bad was a woman at the fence begging to be let in and getting a rifle shoved in her face as an answer. There was also another that showed something trying to cross in the desert. Whether alive or dead…it was shot to hell.”

“How upset would you say the public is?” I asked.

“On a scale of one to ten…I’d say about ten,” answered Georgie. If they were upset before, they’re good and pissed now. Riots are breaking out in Washington. Smaller riots are breaking out around the fences. People are really up in arms. It’s all the news is talking about. Even other countries are going nuts over the way we are dealing with our own people. It’s so bad, that the military brought in some helicopters to patrol over the open spaces with the hummers. They’re worried about some kind of underground railroad thing starting up.”

“
Well that explains the helicopters that you saw.
”

Yeah it does and I was glad that the civilians were causing problems. It was nice to know that the people outside of El Paso cared about those of us stuck inside.

“How many civilians are gathering around the gates?” I asked Georgie.

“About a hundred, they aren’t really at the fence though. The military keeps them about a mile away. None of the civilians and none of the reporters are aloud any closer than that.”

“This is good,” I replied with a smile. I had a plan…kind of.

“Tell him how famous he is,” said Lucy.

“Yeah…Jax, you’re getting pretty popular out there in the real world.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Everyone’s talking about you man. You’re all over the news. We’ve been watching online. Your reputation has spread. Some of them are hailing you as some kind of savior, a few of them think you’re just a red neck with a rifle, but most of them think you’re make-believe.”

“It’s important that you don’t start believing the hype Jax,” added Tito. “We don’t want to follow you if you’re going to do something risky.”

“Whatever,” I replied. “How popular would you say I am Georgie?”

“Whenever they mention the zombie outbreak, they mention you right along with it. Like I said, they’re curious about who you are and if you’re real or not. There have been some artist renderings of what you must have looked like during some of your battles. I even saw an entire cartoon play out that showed how you saved Ivana.”

“You’re bigger than Mickey,” said Lucy with a laugh.

“This is very good. I wanna meet my fans,” I said with bravado. “Let’s make that happen. You said there were about a hundred people at the fences…lets increase those numbers. Get on the computers and start typing. I want thousands of people at those fences by tomorrow afternoon. I want them to storm past where the military is keeping them and I want them right at the border.”

“How are we going to do that?” asked Tito.

“You’re going to get on the internet and ask them to go there,” I replied. “Duh.”

“Why would they go and do that?” said Georgie. “They’ll get arrested.”

“They’ll do it, because we are going to meet them there,” I said with no trace of a smile. “It’s time for us to leave. This is our stand. We are going to those gates and the military is going to have to choose whether or not they are going to shoot us or let us out and they’re going to have to do it with the entire world watching…so make sure the reporters have their cameras.”

“Shit,” said Dudley. “That might work. With the world watching, they may be forced to let us out. We should also post that we will voluntarily allow ourselves to be quarantined for the safety of others. It will make the military look real fucking bad if they don’t let us out.”

“It won’t work,” said Tito. “If we move everyone here, we’ll attract the wrong kind of attention. Even if we make it to the fence, that entire horde of zombies will be right behind us. The military wouldn’t be able to open the gate even if they wanted to.”

“I guess we’ll have to split them up.” I answered. “We’ll divide into two groups. I’ll take most of the fighters with me, and someone can take all the non-fighters in another group. My group can make a lot of noise…get the bulk of the horde to follow us. As soon as the non-fighter group is safe, my group can zig and zag until we lose the zombies and then we can head for the border as well.”

“That would work, said Dudley. “It’s not exactly difficult to get them to follow. We could even have the non-fighters head for the Las Cruces border and the decoy group can head for the Santa Teresa border after they ditch the zombies.”

“Everyone in favor of this plan raise your hand,” I announced.

Everyone but Tito raised their hands.

“Something on your mind Tito?” I asked.

“I don’t like the way you forced us to take action. You took it upon yourself to make certain decisions that led us to this point. I would like to have waited for outside help. Now, I have to make a run for it. I agree that it’s the only plan available, I’m just not happy that I wasn’t more involved with the decisions that led us here.”

“We knew that we’d have to leave eventually,” said Georgie. “Now’s as good a time as any.”

“You could always stay here in protest Tito,” added Dudley.

We all laughed at this. Tito didn’t appreciate it, but we couldn’t help ourselves.

“I want you all to start raising hell on those computers,” I ordered. “And don’t stop till we hit the road tomorrow morning.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Tito.

“I’m gonna make a speech,” I answered.

The survivors were waiting for me when I got outside. Tito and Georgie were right behind me instead of working on the computers. I hopped up on top of a pickup truck and everyone surrounded me. Merrick began to whine, and someone lifted her up to join me. I looked out over the sea of faces and for a moment I froze. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I finally took a deep breath and began.

“By tomorrow afternoon this safe zone will no longer be safe. It will be crawling with the dead and they number around ten thousand.” The crowd gave an almost collective gasp. They even turned their heads around to look at one another as if they weren’t quite sure that I said what I just said. I waited for a moment and just let the panic and urgency sink in. “The good news is…we will no longer be here. Tomorrow morning, we make our move. Tomorrow morning, we make a run for the gates with the entire world watching. The military will be either forced to let us pass, or they will be forced to shoot us.”

“
How did the crowd react to that?
”

Some of them began to cheer, others began to panic.

“Listen to me. I’m not forcing anyone to follow me, if you want to make a run for it on your own, that’s your choice. But the dead are coming. Eventually, they will find you. There is no long term solution if we remain in this city. Eventually, we will die. Now is as good a time as any to take our chance. The world is outraged at us being abandoned and forced to stay in this city. The military will have to let us out. I know that some of you came here so that you wouldn’t have to run anymore and I know that some of you came here in search of a safe place to hide. Unfortunately, there is no safe place in this city. Our only chance for survival is to leave. This is our moment, this is our time and this is our chance. Tomorrow morning we will show the world that we have had enough. Who’s with me?”

This time, there were a lot more cheers. They were afraid, who in their right mind wouldn’t be? Yet, they were with me. That was the important thing. They were with me.

“
Did you expect them to be with you?
”

I didn’t expect anything. I didn’t know what they would say. It would be fair of me to point out that not everybody was happy. In the world we live in, that’s relatively impossible. Some of them were far from being happy.

I let Tito go over all the details. I had nothing left to say. Tito likes that kind of thing anyway. Maybe he’d even smooth things out with those who were upset, or maybe he’d just add fuel to the fire and agree with them that I’m an asshole. Who knows, but it did make me a little nervous that he was hanging out with Calvin.

“
Was Calvin trying to turn the survivors against you?
”

I wouldn’t have put that past him, but the way I figured things, people had to do what they felt was right. I don’t believe in forcing others to do what I think needs to be done. I simply do what I think is right and those that want to follow me are more than welcome. If the survivors all chose to do something else, I wasn’t about to try and stop them. I would simply continue with my plan.

I was never able to grab that shower or grab any sleep. I spent the rest of the night helping others prepare.

“
Mentally or physically?
”

Both, some of them needed help with their weapons. Some of them need help packing. Some needed words of encouragement. The worst of them were the kids without parents. They were scared to death. I tried to give them a little pep talk, and I’d find them a family to hook up with so they wouldn’t feel so alone.