Evacuation (11 page)

Allison held her brother’s hand.

Cash tugged and yanked in an attempt to pull free.

“She’s right,” Crystal said. She was on her feet, standing beside Sues. “I’m not staying.”

“Come with us, Allison,” Char said.

Keel fired three shots into the air. “Get off my boat.
Now!”

“We
were
leaving. Why did you do that? Why did you fire that stupid gun? You just called more zombies over here!”

“Too fuck--”

Char shot him. She just raised her gun, pulled the trigger and shot the captain. The impact spun him around, arms flailing. He did more than a one-eighty, leaned over the helm, and swore as blood pooled and then spilled from the corner of his mouth.

“Oh, shit,” Allison said.

Char was far from done. She aimed, fired and fired and fired.

The Coast Guard returned fire.

Screams came from everywhere. Char drowned out the noise. She concentrated instead on targets. And fired. And fired.

She only stopped when she thought she heard Allison scream out a name. Her ears rang from all the gunplay. A slight shake of her head would clear the clouding. That was when she heard it again. Only Allison wasn’t screaming. Not anymore. Now she sobbed. Sobbed and said the same name, over and over.

“Cash. Cash!”

Chapter Eighteen

“I can walk,” Saylor said. He shrugged off hands trying to help him. He held up his handgun. “I’ve got this.”

He could walk. He’d never be able to run. He winced every time he put any weight on his leg. Ankle was probably worse than a sprain.

“
We going for Marf?” I said.

“See if he’s out.” Palmeri checked the clip in her rifle. Seemingly satisfied, she locked it back in place.

“Marf?” I said into the radio.

“Yeah,” he said.
No ‘over’ this time.

“You out?”

“No. Still here. Can’t get out through the floors. Place is kind of well constructed, surprisingly, and if I’m not mistaken, there’s even more zombies,” he said into my ear.

I told Palmeri, and then went over the radio again. “Anyone else copy this transmission?
Anyone?”

Silence.

Everyone looked at me. I shook my head.

The Coast Guard should hear us. They should be answering at the very least, but they weren’t. I couldn’t help wondering if we were going to return to an empty slip.
The vessel gone. My kids, gone.

“Tell Lou we’re coming for him.”

It finally hit me. Lou, short for Lieutenant. I told him and he thanked us.

“You know where he is, right? You were at his apartment?” Palmeri said.

“About two back that way,” Dave said, pointing. “I’ll lead the way.”

Palmeri nodded. “Okay. We go
slow. I don’t need to stress this, but we look in every direction all at once. Got it?”

We agreed.

Dave stood at the door with one hand on the knob. Saylor was by the window, silhouetted against the flames of the fire just beyond. He craned his head left and right.

“How do we look?” Palmeri said.

“Seven? Eight? I can’t see everything, but they’re out there.”

As if to illustrate the point, something knocked against the door. Dave jumped back.

“They’re milling around. They don’t look like they’re trying to get inside. Not really. They just look, I don’t know, kinda lost,” he said.

“Lost is good,” Palmeri said. “We can surprise them, hopefully.”

I took in a deep breath. Eyes closed. I saw the camp in my head, best I could remember it. The fence outlined everything. The apartments were in rows. We never made it past the center. Way it sounded, we never would. “I think we get Marf, and then we keep going west, toward the fence. Follow it around to the gate,” I said.

“We should stay between apartments,” Saylor said. Again, he spoke loudly, forgetting that his booming voice could attract unwanted attention. “We need to hide, get away from them, and the fence isn’t going to help.”

He might be right. “Okay,” I said. “I agree.”

“How lucky for me,” Saylor said.

“Cool it,” Palmeri said. She knew how to yell without raising her voice. “We’re behind you, Dave. As soon as you’re ready.”

I exhaled.

“As ready as I can be,” he said. He looked at me. I nodded. “Here we go.”

I took a knee, raised my rifle and aimed.

Dave pushed open the door.

The door knocked two zombies over, sending them to the ground. Their arms and legs flailed; looked like they were making mud angels. I almost fired at nothing.
Didn’t have to wait long. Another creature stuck his head in the doorway. It was a woman who had long curly hair. Most of it was matted against her face, and neck. Her arms reached for us and we could see that her flesh was clearly bitten. Mouth-size chunks were missing up her forearm and the bone was exposed under what was left of her decaying meat and tendons.

I fired.

The bullet went through the bridge of her nose. Her eyes crossed as she fell forward. Dave kicked her body out of the doorway. He sent a few rounds into the mud angels. Their bodies danced as the bullets slammed into them, then nothing. They lay flat and still.

Three down, five to go, if Saylor had been correct. Five, if our gunshots didn’t attract more.

“Move,” Palmeri said.

Dave stepped out of the apartment. I was right behind him. I held my gun up, swiveled left and right. To the right were three more. I fired, missed, cursed, and fired again.
Chunked
out a slab of shoulder. The zombie jumped back, off balance, but didn’t go down and didn’t stop advancing. It slowed him, but nothing more.

I closed one eye and lined up the cross hair, ignored the sound of firing weapons, yelling and screaming around me. I fired again. Hit the eye. It popped in a spray of the black goo that once had been blood.
Dropped it.

We were going to the left. The zombies were behind us, moving slowly. Steady, but slow.

I didn’t want to take my eyes off them. I kept the rifle raised, but I didn’t shoot. We were putting some distance between them. I kept an eye on Palmeri and Saylor.

I chanced a look around.

Dave was low, checking the corner before rounding it. He fired his rifle.

“Got a few over here,” he said. “Shit.
More than a few.”

“Shoot ‘em,” I said. “Shoot them all!”

I hoped Saylor and Palmeri had our backs. I stood above Dave. We aimed at the zombies coming up the alley between apartment buildings and fired.

Two ran at us fast. They were decked out in military camo.

“Hit ‘em, hit ‘em,” I said.

I was shooting. Headshots were tough, especially with them running. Heads bobbed. In shows and movies, the good guys hit everything.
Destroyed brains like there was no way to miss. Crossbows sent arrows true. In real life, the here and now, it was different. So fucking different. The more apprehensive the situation made me, the harder it was to aim, but I kept firing.

And firing.

There was no other choice. None.

We nailed the fast ones. Might have been Dave or it could have been me. Like to think, it had been me. I gave up on keeping score. My ratio sucked anyway.

Suddenly, it didn’t matter, anymore. I was out. No more clips on me. No ammo left. “I’m out, got nothing left!”

I held onto the rifle. It was my bat, my sledgehammer. It, and my knife, they were all I had to keep me alive.

“Get up!” It was Palmeri. I looked back and saw that Saylor had fallen and was face down in the mud.

I stopped.

Dave grabbed me by the shoulder. “Keep moving,” he said.

I heard gunshots.
Lots of gunshots. It wasn’t us and didn’t seem to be coming from the camp, so it had to be from the boat. I needed to get back to the boat. Dave was absolutely right; we needed to keep moving.

“Can you help me,” Palmeri said. It was like she was crying out in desperation. I heard it in her voice. I shouldn’t have done it, but I looked back a second time.

Palmeri kneeled next to Saylor. She had her handgun out. She used her free arm and snaked it under Saylor. He was not helpless, so he struggled to help her lift him.

“Dave,” I said.

He fired at a zombie. “We keep moving.”

I went back.
Could not ignore the smell of the apartments burning. The raging fire kept getting closer. There was no worrying about the moon hiding behind clouds now. Flames lit the night sky better than the sun during most days. I dropped on the opposite side of Palmeri.

Dave ran at us. A spattering of flame burst from the front of the rifle barrel. I threw up an arm to shield my head. If Dave was shooting at me, my arm wasn’t going to stop shit. It was just a reflex. Dave wasn’t shooting at me. He was hitting, with pretty dead-on accuracy, the zombies coming at us from behind.

He reached us and dropped his rifle by my side. “I’m out, too!”

In a single, fluid motion, he had his knife out and was in the air. He slammed the heel of his shoes into a zombie’s chest. The thing would have gotten me, no doubt. I hadn’t seen it, or heard it, but it had been right behind me.

With a scream, Dave scrambled, spun around in the mud and threw his body across the creature. I stood up as Dave drove his blade into the zombie’s throat. He tugged his knife across the flesh, sawing at the spine. He grabbed a fist of its hair and pulled on it as he snapped the head one way, the other, and back again until he was able to pull it free. He removed the whole head from the body and cast it aside.

Palmeri was up, too. She fired at the zombies coming from where we had been heading. She aimed and fired. Good shots. Dropped zombies like a pro.

However, we were stuck. With Saylor struggling to stand, we were trapped between two apartments with nowhere to escape to. We needed an out, and right now, I didn’t see one.

I gripped the barrel of my rifle and swung at the head of a fast zombie. I knocked it off balance. It fell against the siding, clawing at the apartment to keep from hitting the ground. It knew it wanted to stay on its feet.

I raised the butt of the rifle and drove into the thing’s face. Its head smashed. It looked like an overripe melon of some sort. The thing’s nose was lost inside the skull and thick black blood oozed from where cheeks and teeth had been. It slumped to the mud, and then just sat there. Battered brains spilled from the huge orifice that was now the center of its face.

“We’re surrounded,” Dave said.

I looked left. Right. Wasn’t quite surrounded. Sandwiched, yes. Sandwiched between the two buildings, and both possible ways out were filled with zombies. They were either slow or cautious. I preferred to think slow. Slow meant they weren’t learning, weren’t getting smarter, and were not afraid of us bashing in their brains.

Slow, or smart, didn’t matter. We had nowhere to turn.
Nowhere to go. “Dave,” I said, holding up my knife.

The two of us could fight our way out
.. Three, if Palmeri came. Saylor would be fucked though. No way to cut a safe path through with Saylor saddling down two of us. Just wouldn’t work. Couldn’t work.

Palmeri insisted on helping Saylor up. He stood with one arm out, as if reaching for a wall to support him. Palmeri slid under that arm. “I’ve got you,” she said.

She didn’t. He weighed twice as much as her. He’d bring her down. With the wet grass, the mud, no way they could run. Fucking zombies slow as turtles would be able to catch and eat them.

“Keep moving,” Dave said.

I pursed my lips and tried to swallow. My throat felt dry, raw and my tongue swollen and thick. Sweat, rain, or mud slid down my forehead. Streaked my face. I wiped it with the back of my sleeve, and my sleeve onto the stomach of my shirt.

I didn’t want to leave anyone behind.

Dave stared at me. He didn’t say a word, but I saw it in his eyes. He screamed it with his eyes.
We keep moving.

Chapter Nineteen

0512 hours

Our predicament resembled a mini-football field, and there were two teams involved; us versus
Them. Felt like we were in the fourth quarter, at the two-minute warning. While I hoped we’d end this, worst case, I wanted to hang on long enough to go into overtime. It didn’t look good. In fact, it looked down right terrible.

Two rectangular apartment buildings sat, one on our left, and the back end of an identical one to the right. To the west, behind us, six or seven zombies approached. Two wore simple hospital gowns with bare limbs exposed to the elements. If I had to guess, flaps were open in the back. Why I thought that, why that popped into my mind, I have no idea. Another wore unidentifiable clothing. It was burnt and melted to her body. Her face and arms had been blackened by heat and fire. If the hair around the charred face hadn’t been so long, I’d never have known it was a woman. The others four were a mix of military and civilians. Men and women with bite marks evident and decay apparent. They were all obviously anxious to sink teeth into our flesh.

To the east, in front of us, there were another eight or so zombies. More gowns, more military, more civilians. My stomach rolled and flopped. I thought I might vomit and probably would.

I wanted a cigarette.
A beer. A burger. I felt famished.

“Chase.” Dave waved me on. He was ready.
Time to go. Time to leave Palmeri and Saylor to their fate. She struggled to keep Saylor on his feet. His weight had to be wearing her out. He definitely rested it all on her shoulder.

A horrible fate.

I sucked in a deep breath and sprang into action.

Not toward Dave. I just couldn’t. I ducked under Saylor’s other arm.

“Get out of here,” he said. “You guys have a better chance. Take Palmeri and get out of here. Fight a way through them.”

“We’re all getting out of here,” I said. It couldn’t be true and didn’t even sound realistic when I said it out loud. Fairytale or not, I committed. “Now fucking help us, help us!”

Saylor’s jaw tensed. He set his foot down, placed weight on his injured leg and winced. He manned up and hobbled with some speed.

Dave grunted, turned, and slashed his blade as if it was a Samurai sword with only an eight-inch reach. I didn’t stop him. He ran into the converging mass. With a swipe, he sliced open a throat, drove the blade into an ear, and stuck it into a third zombie’s Adam’s apple.

“Chase, behind you,” Dave said. He fought, killed, and was still able to warn me.

“Hold him,” I said, not waiting for Palmeri to acknowledge.

I spun around. The burnt zombie closest to me had her arms out, and what was left of her mouth was open. The blackened skin peeled, flaking off her face. A black tongue darted out of her mouth, licking at air the way an iguana or snake might, as if blind, and it used that muscle to sense prey in the area.

With a slash, I chopped the tongue out of its mouth, and heard it plop into a puddle of mud. The thing stepped on its own tongue without losing a sluggish step toward me.

Grabbing it by the hair, I pulled the head forward and drove my foot into its gut. With it doubled over, I slammed my blade to the hilt into the back of its neck, and twisted.

Looking up, I saw more zombies coming. We were definitely surrounded. My breathing was quick and shallow. Sweat dripped from my armpits. I felt claustrophobic. My eyes darted left and right, but I did not see a way out of this. No easy way.

I pulled out my knife. The zombie woman collapsed in a heap of dead carcass at my feet. I stepped around it to the side and used my elbow like a battering ram smashing it into the head of a hospital-gowned creature. Through a solid punch into the jaw of another, and used the blade to disconnect most of its head from the rest of its body.

I heard the others behind me, all engaged in a fight for survival.

One of those fast zombies charged from around a corner, knocking the slower shuffling dead from its path. I saw it, but could not react. My knife was buried deep into the flesh of a beast and I could not remove it. I let go of the handle and threw my hands up, which was the only way to defend myself from the attack.

A gunshot rang out.

In mid-flight, the fast zombie dropped, as if a bird shot out of the sky.

At the next set of apartments was someone with a rifle.

There was no time to yell out a thank you. I reached down, yanked my blade free and punched it between the eyes of the next gowned zombie. Holding the thing by an ear, I pulled my blade free, and the ear off of its head.

More shots came from whoever it was on the opposite side of the zombies. With deadly aim, he dropped creature after creature. He walked towards us as he fired. He used his rifle completely different from the way I had. I pressed the trigger like a person with an incurable twitch. He took single shots, hit a target, and then went on to the next.

I knew who it was, who it had to be. Not sure why, but I felt relieved.

As Spade got closer, the zombies around us got
more
dead.

I ran my shoulder into a zombie’s back. It had turned from me and had been walking toward Spade. My knee crunched into its spine as we hit the ground. I ran the blade across the back of its neck, raised it high, and holding it in both hands brought it home. My hand shook as the sharp teeth on the steel chewed through its spinal cord.Spade held out a hand and pulled me up. “We’re out of ammo,” I said.

“I’m just about out, too.”

There was no time, but I still wondered where Chatterton and Vitale were.
Feared the worst. Got to a point where hoping for the best just didn’t seem to make sense anymore.

Dave and Palmeri held their own. Spade and I joined their end of the fight. We ran past Saylor, who held his knife close to his chest. He must be out of ammunition as well. He appeared ready to battle anything that got close, and I’ll bet thankful nothing had yet.

It resembled a barroom brawl. Punches thrown, kicks delivered. Dave head-butted a zombie, then crashed his elbow into the face of one behind him. Palmeri could scrap. She grabbed at arms, and broke bones with her knees. Thought I saw some martial arts training in her moves. Nothing Jackie Chan worthy, but by the speed and fluidity, it was evident.

The quicker we clear the dead the faster I could get back to my kids. With that in mind, that solitary inspiration, I kicked down at the top of a zombie’s knee. The crunch of bone and cartilage was loud. The thing didn’t cry out, but it crumbled. I stepped on its back. Pulled on its
hair; ran the blade across its throat fast, hard, and again, before shoving the blade to the hilt through the temple. An eyeball popped from the socket, perhaps making room for the passing by of the blade’s serrated edge.

Saylor screamed.

I looked up. He was down with two zombies on him. He stabbed at one of them repeatedly. The blade punctured the thing’s side. Intestines spilled out. The zombie kept at him with mouth open and teeth bared.

The way Saylor’s arm was almost pinned, there wasn’t much more he could do. Without bullets to destroy the brains, simply slitting a throat or stabbing them repeatedly was as useless as blowing a hole in their chest with a shotgun.
Had to stop the head, the brains, because all other efforts were pointless.

My feet fought for traction. The cold muddy ground was like ice. As I made my way toward him, I watched the second zombie, bite the lobe from Saylor’s ear. It tore at the flabby flesh and tugged at it. The chewing is what disgusted me most. It gnashed teeth on Saylor’s lobe, tongue licking at its lips to swipe at spilling blood.

Saylor screamed and screamed. Partly from the pain of the bite, I assumed, but mostly from anger. Angry he’d been bitten, and angry he couldn’t do shit to get the zombies off him.

I dropped to a knee in front of it. The thing looked up at me, let out a guttural roar and hiss. I saw a small flab of lobe on its tongue, sloshing around inside its mouth. I stuck my blade into its mouth until the tip poked out of the back of its head.

The milky white eyes stared at me. No way had they seen me. Not anymore. I’d stabbed the fucking life out of it for good, for real, this time.

Saylor managed to kill the one he’d been struggling against, the one that had distracted him while the other ate his ear.

“It bit me, man. It bit me,” he said. He was on one knee, the injured leg extended.

“You’ll be all right,” I said. No idea why. We both knew he was fucked.

He didn’t even humor me; wasn’t interested in being passive. He was military. He took action. What I never expected was the action taken.

He started to growl.

I thought, ah fuck, he’s changing into one of them already? Was it that fast? How fucked was I being this close to him. I need to get up, get away, and keep moving.

I had been wrong. He wasn’t changing. He was working up courage or strength, or both. All at once, he grabbed the top of his bitten ear with one hand and then with the knife in his other, severed the ear off. It wasn’t a clean cut. It bled profusely. Blood just seemed to leak from the side of his head.

Saylor held his ear in front of his face. His jaw set, mouth open. Muscles bulged on his neck. His arms shot to his side. He looked up into the fiery night sky.

“I’m not going to turn into one of those things, McKinney. I fucking ain’t, I just fucking ain’t.”

Spade came over and looked at the ear Saylor held in his hand. “It fuckin’ bit you and you chopped your ear off?”

“Fuck yeah, I did.” He was charged with energy with muscles tense all over his body.

“Fuck yeah!” Spade matched tempo. Had to be a military thing. Reminded me of a football team encircling each other on the sideline before the game, jumping up and down. Psyching each other up and out. Comrades. Buddies. Brothers.

They both howled. Except this time when Saylor looked to the sky like a wolf, Spade punched the heel of his hand into Saylor’s face; drove the nose bone into the brain. Saylor fell over, flat onto his back. Mud splashed out around him.

“Can’t risk it,” Spade said. Not sure he was talking to me.

I stood up.
Looked around. The carnage was everywhere. The dead finally dead and we’d lost one, which was too much. The guy had cut off his own ear to live. “Now what?”

“We get back to the ship; we get the fuck out of here.”

“Lieutenant Marfione’s holed up in one of these,” I said. I used the radio on my sleeve. The bud dangled, resting on my chest. I lifted it and stuffed it back into my ear.

“Anything?”

“Nothing. But after the explosion we couldn’t hear anyone earlier, just him, Just Marf.” I tried reaching the L.T. again.

“The radios are crap. It’s that simple. Government
issue. The moisture, the distance – short as it is – could be a million reasons why it doesn’t work. Ours, mine anyway, cut out right away.”

Had Allison or my kids tried reaching me or tried to find out what was going on? Where or how we were doing?

We needed to find Marf, yes, but we needed to get back to the ship. I hadn’t forgotten the shooting I’d heard earlier coming from their direction.

While I still wanted to know what happened to Vitale and Chatterton, I figured now was not the time. Guess I didn’t need an explanation. It was kind of self-explanatory. Zombies were everywhere.
Explosions. There was no need to ask. My imagination worked fine. They were dead. With Spade, I had no doubt, if they’d been bitten, they would not return as a zombie, either.

I yelled into my sleeve in one last attempt.
“Marf!”

“I think it was the apartment back here,” Dave said.
“That one.”

The one he pointed at could very well have been the apartment Marf was in. Had it of been, he would have seen us out the window. If he saw us from the window, why didn’t he join the fight?

“Let’s check,” Spade said. He went forward and as he passed Palmeri, he hesitated long enough to touch her shoulder. Maybe there had been something between Palemeri and Saylor. More than I’d picked up on. I hadn’t seen it but Spade’s gesture revealed much, much more.

She didn’t meet my eyes as I followed Spade. Silently, she fell in behind me. I heard the sloshing sound of her boots in the mud. I wished I could think of comforting words to share. Something I could say to ease her pain.

It was a new world. A different one. I got it. Gone were the days of comforting one another, if we ever really did that before. Pain was in surplus. Kind of like you didn’t mind saying
God Bless You
when someone sneezed, but when the person lets out three or four in a row, you’re like,
fuck man, I’ll just wait until he’s all done.

That’s where we were.
In the midst of it. No point saying, “Sorry for your loss.” Not now. Not yet. Not until it we were all done.