Generation Dead (Book 3): Beyond The Gates (6 page)

Chapter 13

A mile later found us in the center of town, and it was easy to see that there wasn’t anything for us here.  The old buildings had been broken into, and the weather of the last twenty years had taken a fearsome toll on most of them.  Those that still had their windows intact had fared better, but not by much.

Jake rolled the van to a stop in the middle of the intersection at the center of town.  On one side was a small café still advertising local beef stew while a real estate office commanded another corner.  That building, being all brick, was in much better shape.  Across the street, a newer looking building housed several businesses with what looked to be apartments on the second floor.

I got out of the van and stretched, unkinking my neck and back.  My legs were tingly from sitting too long, and I could see that Julia felt the same way from the manner in which she placed her steps.  Kayla jumped out fresh as ever, and Jake was just Jake.

“Not much here, not even when it was alive,” he said.  Pointing to the real estate office, he said, “Wonder f they have any maps in there that might be useful?”

I nodded.  “That would be a good thought.  Let’s take a look.”  I slipped my tomahawk into my hand and pulled my Ka-Bar with the other.  Jake cocked his head at me but pulled his own knives just in case.  We were close to the barricades, and we had heard stories about how a few zombies every year managed to get through and cause problems.  People who lived in the area usually took care of things before they became a more serious problem, but outbreaks had been known to occur.  We had heard of the bad one about five years ago, and it took communities as far as a hundred miles away to come together to get it contained.  Besides, the real estate office’s front door was open, and I never took that as an open invitation.

“What do you want us to do?” Kayla called as we headed in that direction.

“Look around,” Jake said. “Might be something of use around here.”

Five seconds later Jake and I watched the van drive off with our wives.

I broke the silence first.  “Was that what you meant?”

Jake shook his head slowly.  “Not really.”

We went over to the real estate office and looked it over.  It was a two story brick building, and the first glance was favorable.  Everything seemed intact, and that was a good sign for anything made of paper in there.  Years of moisture tended to play havoc with books and printed material.  I wasn’t surprised that the real estate office hadn’t been broken into.  In times of a crisis, what would you find of use in a place like that?

The door was locked, and Jake spent a minute banging on the doorknob with his pick.  The lock lost the fight, and Jake used the pointed end to twist open the remains of the handle.  Twenty years of rust protested loudly as Jake pulled the door open.

Inside, the office looked like it must have years ago.  A thin layer of dust covered everything, and apart from that the place could easily open for business tomorrow.  Not that the market for real estate was going to bounce back any time soon.

“I’ll head upstairs, you look around here,” I told Jake.  I didn’t have to tell him what to look for, this was his idea in the first place. I moved towards the back and found a flight of stairs behind another door.  This door was directly across from the back door, and I could see the parking lot through the small windows.

The stairs creaked in dismay as my heavy self moved up quickly.  I didn’t take the usual precautions with a place like this; I figured anything that was in here would have moved when Jake pounded on the door.  If it hadn’t moved by then, it was seriously dead.

Upstairs was nearly the exact copy of downstairs.  There was a central waiting area with small offices occupying the corners of the building.  One section looked to be a kitchen and another was a bathroom.  On a small table by the waiting area was a box that contained the remains of mummified donuts. 

I started with the first office I went into and looked around for any maps.  There were lots of maps of the surrounding area, but I needed something bigger.  The next office yielded the same results, and the third actually had less.  Given the spartan nature of the place, I’d have guessed this one was unoccupied. 

The last office I checked had three maps that might prove useful.  The first was a road map of Idaho, and the second was a topography map of Oregon.  I didn’t care about the elevations, I just wanted the latitudes written on the sides.

I made my way downstairs and bumped into Jake as he walked towards the back.

“Anything?” I asked.

“Shhh!!” Jake put his finger up to emphasize the instruction, and then pointed to an outside window.

I looked out and immediately ducked down, trying to stay out of sight.  What I had seen was something I was sure no one had seen in a long time.

Jake joined me on the floor.  “What do you think we should do?”

“I think we need to be smarter than we’ve been,” I snapped. “I don’t recall banging on a doorknob as part of our training.”

“Tell me you guessed this was happening here, and I will call you liar,” Jake hissed back.

“Point taken.  Here’s our problem.  The girls will be back soon and likely in the middle of this before they know it. We have to handle this, at least until they can give us some backup,” I said.

“If they can,” Jake said.  “For all we know they’re holed up in either a building or the van, waiting for us.”

I didn’t like that thought.  Outside of the building were about twenty zombies of all shapes and sizes.  Wherever they had been hiding, Jake’s banging on the door had brought them out.  I understood why this town was abandoned.  The zombies had moved in, and the neighborhood went to hell.

“Plan?” I asked.

“Just kill them before they kill us,” Jake said.

“Rifle would be nice,” I said, peeking out of a window.

“Don’t be a baby.”

“Front door or back?”

“Back, parking lot has only two out there.”

“Let’s go get them.”

Chapter 14

I went over to the door and quietly unlocked it.  I kept my head down so the zombies outside wouldn’t get any advanced warning.  Jake was right behind me, close enough that his pick was poking me in the back.  I twisted the knob and braced myself.  I figured the hinges on this door weren’t going to be any quieter than the ones on the front door.

I was right.  I pushed the door out, and the rusty things groaned like Jake getting out of bed.  It was loud enough that the two zombies crossing the parking lot immediately turned our way.  The second they saw Jake and me burst out of the building they set up their own moaning, which came in second place to the door, I have to admit.

“Left!” I called, heading towards the zombie that was in that general direction.

“Got it,” Jake said, slipping off to the right to deal with the dead one over there.

Mine was your typical walking deader. It once was a man about thirty, and by the looks of him, he’d not been a zombie for very long. If I had to guess, I’d say he’d been ghouling it up for less than a couple of years.  His face was torn around the mouth and right eye while his left arm hung useless at his side.  There was a lot of dried blood around the shoulder, so it was likely something vital had been torn there.

I stepped up to him and kicked him in the hip on the right side, making him fall to the left.  His useless arm crumpled underneath him, and he struggled with his right arm to get himself back on his feet.  I didn’t give him the chance.  A straight shot with my tomahawk to the back of his head ended his budding zombie career.

Jake was wiping off his pick with the shirt of the zombie he had killed.  It was another one that seemed to be somewhat new to the zombie scene.  He was looking at it for a moment before he looked up at me.

“Well, that’s a start.  We’d better see about the other ones,” Jake said.

“No need,” I said, pointing to the side of the building.  Three zombies were making their way around the corner, and when they saw us they groaned long and loud.  Answering moans came from the other side of the building, and I knew the hunt was on.

“It’s going to get real interesting fast, and we’re going to get swarmed pretty soon,” I said, backing up.

Jake looked thoughtful for a second.  The zombies, in the meantime, were moving at a pretty good clip towards us.  They cleared the side of the building and fanned out, stumbling in their hurry to tear us apart.

Jake shifted his feet, then jumped forward, swinging the pick from the left side.  He slammed the pointed end into a short female zombie’s head, which knocked her off her feet into the path of the other zombie.  Jake left the pick in her skull and stepped on the back of the zombie who had fallen.  One quick stab of his knife, and the struggling zombie went limp.

Jake had some pretty amazing knives.  They were simple but extremely deadly.  They had a thick blade that allowed for strength in the cut and thrust.  The point was like a needle, but thick enough to punch through bone with ease.  The edge was curved, with a straight edge that swept upward sharply halfway towards the point. This gave them slashing ability that could take off an arm.  Originally, they had come with a simple handle, but Jake had added a small hilt to keep his hand from slipping off and getting cut during a stab.

I thought about this as I watched him work, and distracted myself enough that the third one nearly got to me.  She was a teenager and faster than your normal zombie.  The younger the faster, and usually more dangerous.  This one was no different. She came at me with teeth bared and hands out.  I stepped to the side to avoid her rush, and she checked her progress quicker than I had hoped.  She turned towards me, got both hands on my forearm, and yanked my hand towards her mouth for a bite. 

Normally that would be a problem.  In past encounters I would have to jam my tomahawk into her mouth to stop her from biting me.  But this time she had grabbed the hand that held a seven-inch blade.  I just let her pull the knife towards her face and at the last instant turned the blade upwards.  She literally stabbed herself in the head with my knife.  No matter what you wanted to call it, I’d take that one as a win. 

Her body fell away as more zombies came stumbling around a corner.  I looked back at Jake, and he just shook his head.

“Run or hole up?” I yelled, bracing myself for either.

“Let’s get back inside.  We can control the access better from in there,” Jake said, turning back towards the building.

“Right behind you.”

We ran up to the real estate building and leaped back inside.  I left the door open because I wanted the zombies to come in.  We could restrict their access and take them out from one direction only as opposed to trying to fend off multiple targets from every angle.  We could also bottle them up at one entrance and make for the other when the front end was clear.

In a perfect zombie world, that would have happened.  In the real world, God has a way of laughing at your plans.  I barely got through the door when Jake grabbed my shirt and threw me at the stairs leading to the second floor. 

“Get up there, now!” He snarled.

“What the hell?”

“Just go, dammit!”

If it spooked Jake, I was all for running until I could figure out how to deal with it.  Despite all the stories of people doing supposedly really heroic things while fighting zombies, the best defense was usually called Run Like Hell.

At the top of the stairs I turned and waited, watching as Jake jumped up the steps, taking three at a time.  Nearly at his heels was a pair of zombie kids racing after him.  I started my swing before Jake even passed me, and my tomahawk cut the air where Jake used to be after he ducked out of the way.  The solid steel axe head connected with the little zombie right where her nose reached her forehead.  Her head stopped immediately, but her feet flew up off the ground, allowing the little zombie behind her to duck under and continue pursuing Jake. 

But my brother had gained a second with my killing the first zombie, and that was all he needed to turn at bay. The pickaxe made a whistling sound as it cut the air and a heavy thud as it crushed the little devil’s skull. 

I didn’t waste time like I had outside, since there was another zombie kid on the stairs.  This one was coming up slower, but still faster than any adult zombie outside.  I wrenched my axe out of the first one and spun the blade, facing the ghoul with a blackened knife and a spike.  I spun as it charged, using the momentum to backhand the sharp end into the back of its skull.  The child fell to the ground and joined the other two Jake had tossed down the stairs.

“Quick moves, brother,” Jake said, taking a two handed grip on his pick.

“Got a better one for the rest,” I said, circling the stairs and laying hold of the banister that kept people from falling down the stairs.

Chapter 15

Jake looked at me quizzically for a second, then got what I was going to do.

“Nice.” He went to the other side and took hold of the banister there.  A couple of hard wrenches, and we were able to rip the old wooden railings away from the edge of the stairs.  Below us the zombies from the outside were becoming the zombies on the inside and were working their way up the flight of stairs.  I wiped my blades and axe off on the clothes of the dead zombies and pulled out my falchion for this next bit of work. I’d need the extra reach.  Jake was fine with the long handle of his pick, and we had nothing to do but wait for targets.

Luckily, these targets came to us.  The first one Jake took, smacking it on the head as soon as it cleared the level of the floor. I took the next one, cracking its skull underneath my heavy blade.

This went on for a bit, with Jake whistling to keep the zombies from getting interested in anything else.  He picked some nonsensical tune and seemed to always hit a high note when he killed another zombie.  I tried to keep up, but the zombies weren’t exactly accommodating.  I always seem to hit them on the low notes.

The stairs were becoming crowded, but that was okay, since we were running out of zombies.  Jake took the second to last one, and I killed the last, a short man with tight black hair streaked with dried blood. He had made a supreme effort to climb over the dead corpses of his dead friends and joined them in the afterlife as a reward.

The building was silent as Jake and I listened intently for any movement downstairs. I went so far as to throw a few chairs down the stairs to see if anything was interested in coming up to the second floor for a chat.  Nothing.

“Well, that takes care of that.  Any others outside?” I asked Jake.

Jake went over to three of the offices and looked out the windows.  He came back to the stairs and shook his head. 

“All clear. But there’s another problem,” Jake said.

“What’s that?”

“How are we getting out of here?”

I looked at the pile of corpses and chairs that were in some places five feet deep.  The doorway at the bottom was nearly blocked completely with bodies.

“Window, I guess,” I said, heading over to the front of the building.  I looked out, and the scene was rather calm.  No one would have known there were twenty or so zombies out there a little while ago.  I opened the window and looked out, hoping to see something I could climb out to.  Luckily, the front door had a bit of a roof extending out a ways, and I was able to jump over onto that. Using the beard of my tomahawk, I hooked the edge and swung over.  Using my other hand, I freed my axe and dropped to the ground.

Jake took a different route.  He jumped out of the window and caught the edge of the awning with both hands.  In a few seconds he was standing beside me, rubbing his hands together.

“That seemed like a better idea in theory,” he said, pulling a bottle of spray out of his pack and burning the virus off of his weapons.

“They usually are,” I said, sanitizing my own.

We had just packed up the spray and put away our weapons when we heard the sound of an engine.  Up the street our van was rounding a corner, and it came quickly to our side.  Julia was driving, and she threw me a huge grin.

“You guys look bored!” she said, laughing with Kayla at the joke of leaving us by ourselves.

I climbed inside the van. Jake gave me a knowing look, and we decided silently not to mention the episode at the office.  I pulled out the maps I had taken from the place. 

“Not yet, and I think we won’t be for a while,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Kayla asked, turning in her seat.

Jake pulled out his own maps. 

“We have enough here to figure out where those people were coming from and how to backtrack to where they are,” he said.

Julia and Kayla starting talking at once, but I interrupted.

“Let’s get out of this town first and make our way west a bit towards Casper.  I’d rather spend the night in some place other than this van.  We can search for answers after dinner,”  I said.

I didn’t have to hear the grunts of assent, but I knew they were there.