Murphy's Law (Roads Less Traveled Book 2) (18 page)

I stood there, gripping my rifle with both hands, John’s hand still on my shoulder, and listened to the sounds of fourteen bolts and levers being worked simultaneously. I have to say it was one hell of a rush hearing that, and also quite impressive. The tension level dropped incredibly fast in a matter of seconds, every single sniper on that wall zeroing in on their targets and falling into the zone. It also helped me regain some focus and confidence.

Here we go
.

Gunfire ripped through the air.

I gave John a solid nod, then stepped up to the ledge and bent at the waist. Those crazy bastards were still throwing themselves against the gate, though now they were more beaten and bloody than before, their clothes falling to the ground piece by piece. I braced my knees against the ledge and swung my rifle over. I’d just reloaded before John had given the order to hold fire earlier, so I knew I only had enough shells for the number of deadheads below. No pressure to make every shot count. None at all.

I felt a firm tug on the back of my jeans and knew that someone, probably John, was holding me by my waistline. I leaned a little further and rested the bipods of my rifle against the stone wall.

Don’t drop your gun, don’t drop your gun.

I stared down sixty-five feet to the raging midgets on the ground below. To say it was a weird shooting position would be a ridiculous understatement. It would be interesting to see if I could pull it off.

Confident the hand gripping my jeans wasn’t going to let go, I gripped the forearm of my rifle tightly with my left hand and pulled the butt of the stock firmly into my shoulder. My right hand rested easily around the grip, my index finger and thumb preparing to squeeze off a round. Though the shooting was incessant all around me, at that moment it seemed the rest of the world faded away. My breathing and heartbeat slowed, all I was seeing was the crosshairs in my scope and the target on the other side. I say target because by this time I had stopped thinking of them as zombies or dead people trying to eat me. They were simply targets, no more, no less.

After completely wrapping myself in cold indifference, I began taking my shots, picking off those squirmy, twisted little shit-asses one by one. All this seemed to drag on for minutes, so long that I wondered how far into the swarm the rest of the snipers had carved. In reality the whole thing lasted only seconds. The next thing I knew, John was pulling me back by the seat of my pants and my rifle was empty.

“Well done. Now get into position and get to work on the swarm.”

I knew the adrenaline rush from what I’d just accomplished would threaten my ability to shoot smoothly. While John turned and paced back to his position at the far end, I fell into my chair and took a deep breath. I tried to reload my rifle but my hands were shaking too hard. Mia had just stopped to reload as well, and she noticed I was a tad bent out of shape.

“Here, get a drink, cool down.” She handed me a bottle of water that had been at her feet.

I accepted it, twisted the cap off and gulped down a few mouthfuls. The sniper-fire was beginning to slow just a bit and I was reminded of something I’d told my friends back on the rooftop in Matias: “They’re not in a hurry, so neither are we.” The front of the swarm had been thinned considerably and the bodies were piling up in a hurry. At least that provided a sort of barrier between the rest of the deadheads and the fence.

I also noticed that the snipers, including Jake and Mia, had fallen into a rhythm with one another. While one fired, the next rested and reloaded. It made sense to do it this way, and I was surprised at how natural it seemed to be for them. Once again, common sense won out over panic. There were even coolers filled with drinks and snacks set up every so many feet, and each shooter had an ammo box next to their chair. Small details I had missed before. Now that I had a chance to stop and catch my breath, I realized just how prepared these people really were for a situation like this.

After finishing off the water, I twisted around in my seat and ran my eyes across the neighboring rooftops. Those lonely shooters looked pretty relaxed, one even had her feet up on part of an air conditioning unit with her hands laced behind her head.

“Hold your fire!” John suddenly yelled.

He walked along the wall repeating the order until the only sound floating through the air was the frustrated moaning of zombies coming from just below the crest of the hill north of the prison. My fourteen fellow marksmen had dropped a couple hundred deadheads. Unfortunately that had forced the remainder to halt their march up the hill, and we all knew they were too stupid to go around. They were simply standing out there, just out of sight behind the pile of bodies, all flocked together, moaning. Every so often we would catch a glimpse of a head bobbing back and forth, or an arm waving in the air, but nowhere near enough skull to chance a shot.

“Well, shit,” Jake commented.

I seconded that. John had stopped and was talking to Michael, most likely trying to decide what to do next and definitely not wanting the Warden’s input.

“We needed to stop anyway, John. Barrels are getting hot, and we need a break before we burn out,” Michael said.

John pulled the ball cap from his shaved head and rubbed a hand over it. The tattoos and one huge scar zigzagging the back of his scalp made me wonder if John hadn’t been a prisoner himself pre-Z. He and Michael seemed to be pretty chummy. I suppose that didn’t mean anything either way. The world turning upside down tends to make for strange bedfellows.

“How are we on ammo?” John asked.

“I’m not sure. I’ve only reloaded four times, so I’ve probably got a few hundred shells left. Most likely the same with everyone else, but I can find out.” Michael turned quickly and walked to the far end, then made his way up the line, asking how we were doing on ammunition. Meanwhile John got on the radio and talked to Kelly in the maintenance garage, informing her of the situation and checking on the morale of those just sitting and waiting.

“And the kids, how’re they holding up?” he asked after a moment’s hesitation.

This startled me; I never once thought about children living within these walls, besides the one I saw playing with Gus that once, and so far had not gone out of my way to meet anyone else besides Michael and Shirley. The full gravity of our situation finally sunk in once I pieced together all the little bits I’d overheard of this plan.

The entire population of Blueville was here, in this prison. Well, those who had survived the initial storm on Day One, that is. Of
course
there were kids here, along with old women, men, folks my age, teenagers, prisoners and former military. I never once stopped to think about any of them, or the struggles they must to have endured, very successfully I might add. It was obvious to me now: this Evac Plan that Kelly was in charge of involved nothing more than keeping all those who were unskilled, too old, or too young to shoot, together in the garage, packed into whatever vehicles the townsfolk had brought here, until such time that John or Michael deemed the situation too dangerous or lost. Then I assumed Kelly would do just as I had overheard Michael telling her to do; lead them out the back gate and as far away as possible. Perhaps to some fall-back location, I wasn’t sure.

“Damn, I could really go for a fajita right now,” Jake said just before turning up a bottle of Coke and taking a long drink.

I smiled and dug the pack of Camels from my back pocket, watching Michael and John put their heads together.

“We’re good on ammo, but I don’t think it matters, John.” He looked out over the bodies, rubbed his chin, then returned his worried eyes to John’s. “What the hell do we do now?”

“I’m not sure yet. But I
do
know we’re not asking that douchebag Harvel. This is
our
house, and
we’re
calling the shots from now on. You with me, Mikey?” There was definitely a hint of malice in his voice.

As I took a long drag of my cigarette, I decided that John had been a prisoner before the shit hit the fan.

March 24
^th
: Just After Nightfall

“Goddamnit, Jonah.” Jake slammed his hand of cards down onto the makeshift table.

“C’mon now, don’t be sore,” the scruffy cowboy from, you guessed it, Texas, teased, swiping his hand across the top of the cooler and pulling back his hard-earned winnings.

Jonah looked like something that had just walked out of a Western. From what we’d been able to gather from his sparse and random stories throughout the afternoon, he was a drifter who’d been working his way across the country, hitching rides and hoofing it when he had to, for no other reason than “it seemed like the thing to do.” Sounded a little shady to me, but it wasn’t any of my business.

Jake had talked and joked with the stoic outlaw all day, trying to get a reaction out of him. It had turned into a little game: Push the Cowboy ‘til He Snaps. Suffice it to say he had failed miserably, and, much to my surprise, hadn’t even been able to get a simple shut-the-hell-up out of Jonah. Finally Jake had asked him about his rifle. Yes, that’s all it took. Half a day later, we found ourselves sitting around a cooler, playing poker with a guy who looked like he’d rather piss on you than say hello. And these boys weren’t playing for money, they were playing for chores, and so far Jake was losing his ass.

“You sure as hell didn’t learn to play poker from your Grandma,” Mia said, remembering all the nights she and Nancy had stayed up until after midnight playing cards at Crousley’s house. All the nights she had lost just as badly as Jake was losing now.

“Eat it.” Jake took a long swig from his bottle of Bud Light.

Our new friend just smirked and shuffled the cards again.

We’d been sitting around all day, watching the perimeter and waiting for the swarm to move. Waiting, watching, sweating our asses off in the early-spring sun. Some snipers had drifted on and off the wall, tired of sitting, taking turns with bathroom breaks. When lunchtime had rolled around, Nancy and the old doctor came up with trays of sandwiches. Michael, John, and the rest of Michael’s men had tossed ideas around, none of which seemed to satisfy everyone. After napping for the tenth time, and after eating a quick supper supplied once again by Nancy and the doctor, I’d settled myself down to watch the card game and tried my best not to lose my grip on the last sliver of patience I had left.

The spotlights all around the prison had been turned on, lighting up the surrounding area and perimeter fence. It was eerie, staring out to the end of the light, and hearing those damn moans coming from just beyond the darkness. Eerie and claustrophobic. I still couldn’t believe the swarm hadn’t moved yet. Granted, the terrain of the land the prison sat on wasn’t something a zombie could move around on easily, but knowing the only thing driving them was an intense urge to feed, thereby ensuring the survival of the virus, you’d think they would have walked around the pile of bodies by now and came at the fence from a new direction.

Stupid zombies.

“C’mon, Daddy needs a week off from clean-up duty,” Jonah mumbled to himself, looking at his last card. I noticed Mia had that crooked little smile on her face again, one she had been sporting most of the afternoon once Jonah had introduced himself to us.

Good for her
, I thought,
Girls always did love cowboys.
Then, out of nowhere, I thought of Zack. My palms suddenly became so sweaty I almost dropped my beer bottle.

Don’t do this
.
Don’t you dare cry
.

“Hey.” Mia touched my knee.

I looked over at her and blinked a few times, sucking it up. She patted my knee and turned back to the game, knowing what I was thinking as best friends usually do. I handed what was left of my beer to Jake; I’d had enough and there was too much going on to get shitfaced again. Besides, I knew that if I kept it up, drinking would quickly turn into a problem, one I couldn’t afford to have right now.

“Thanks, Boss,” he said and finished it off.

Nancy was gone, having joined the rest of Kelly’s crew in the cafeteria. Michael had decided sometime before supper to move them someplace more comfortable than the garage, but still wanted to keep them together in case they needed to make a run for it. That left either the cafeteria or the gym, so they opted for the former since it had tables and chairs. Let alone food and an exit that led straight to the garage through a series of corridors.

With Nancy gone and these two jokers engrossed in a poker game, I found myself thinking about things I shouldn’t have been thinking about. The background music didn’t help matters much. I looked around and studied the other people on the wall, trying to get my mind off Zack, Ben, my family, and the general bleakness of our current situation. There was one other card game going on down at the far end, by the staircase. Another small group of snipers were sitting together on my other side, bullshitting and remembering the “good old days.” On the other side of that group, huddled in the shadows of the newly-remodeled “dormitory” building, was a couple of snipers making out like there was no tomorrow. Hell, maybe there wouldn’t be.