Surviving The Aftermath (Book 1): The Dead Linger (36 page)

Oscar rumbled up the road following Brian and Andy in the lead car. Brian was guiding them there, filling them in over the radio on the weak parts in the fences that hadn’t been rebuilt after the last horde attacked them. There were 30 people, mixed ages, races and genders in the back, they didn’t have time to be nit-picky, and needed numbers and able bodies. Oscar had no idea how this would go down, it’s not like they’d be able to sneak up, or make a fast get away so they had to make sure they had the situation in control before trying anything.

The plan was basic, fire bomb the house and offer shelter to those who wanted it. Kurt was not sure if that was a good idea. Taking in strangers always worried him. Did they want to share what they had, or take what you got. Everyone called him paranoid, but after the Jeff and Tyler debacle he was extra leery, but Brain reassured him he would be able to point out the good and the bad. Kurt had to put his faith in this boy.

“ETA is 5mins out.” Andy announced over the radio.

“You still think this is a bad idea?” Oscar asked without turning to look at Kurt. Kurt whipped his head to look at him quick with his mouth agape. “How did you know  .  .  . .” He trailed off.

“Because I know you. Plus I can tell when you are thinking about something really intently. You make that beat box noise with your throat, like you’re at a rave or something.” Kurt thought about it for a moment a realized he was right, he had been making some imaginary song up, but he thought it was soft enough that only he could hear it. He just smiled “Yeah I guess I’m worried, will we have room, supplies, will one of them try and pull a Jeff? I mean if this place is really as bad as Tom said, what if we get bum rushed.”

“Well figure it out somehow. We’ve made it work this long.” Oscar reached over to touch Kurt’s hand, a bit of reassurance and comfort helped both of them. Especially when they saw the house surrounded by the aluminum fencing, just like Tom and Brian said.

“Well this will get interesting.” Kurt rechecked his weapon, turned the safety off and un-slung the shoulder strap. He wasn’t sure what would happen but he wanted to be ready to shoot at the first signs of trouble.

Everyone rushed out of their vehicles, the cargo truck’s back door was put down and everyone jumped down to get ready. Their arrival hadn’t been unnoticed, they could hear raised voices, shouts and actual gun fire. Everyone ran to the pre-determined spots on the fencing and started pushing, it was amazing the speed at which the walls went down, catching both sides in a shocked like state. One crew was charged with emptying the house and torching it. The goal was to get the drop on them, but when machine gun fire was heard from inside, Oscar abandoned his job and rushed to help. Getting to the porch he saw two of his crew down and out, not good. He gathered the remaining and they would clear the house his way. Set it on fire and wait for the ones with guns to come running out.

Chaos had ensued. Total anarchy was taking place. With the fences down some people just took off running for the trees, others tried to hide, people were in a mass state of panic and chaos. The rescue crews were trying quickly to explain the situation and why they were here. Everything was happening way too fast, there were just too many people.

Oscar signaled to Kurt and the others. “Hit it!” Lit cocktails hit the side and roof of the house, the place caught on fire quick.

“Everyone on me!” They all came rushing and assumed the kneeling firing position as Oscar had, they were lined up on either side of the stairs by the front door. “Anyone with a gun emerges, kill ’em.” They weren’t taking any chances, they couldn’t afford too. Groups of men came running out seconds later, three or four at a time, the first few all were armed and taken out quick, but it soon became hectic as there were a few in between with no weapons and were shot anyway. “Hold your fire!” Oscar was calling out. They needed to regroup as the pile of bodies was building up and they were losing sight of their objective. More men came running out without weapons, they stepped over the bodies and saw the people kneeling and put their hands up. Oscar just signaled for them to move on. Smoke was starting to billow out and he could see flames on the ceiling as a few women came out coughing and each had several children with them. Oscar lowered his rifle and was stunned. He wasn’t sure what to do or say.

“How could you do this?” One woman asked. Oscar had no reply and just signaled for a couple of guys to take them to the truck and get them water. He turned and could see the place being demolished, he couldn’t tell if it was his people or there’s. Bodies were lying on the ground, a mixed group of them and us, some people were kneeling with their hands on their head looking up at the gun men. This is not the way this should have gone down. He had to get control and fast. Oscar looked for higher ground, and found a collapsed pile of rubble. “Stop! Stop! Cease fire!” He voice boomed and soon others were helping calling a halt to the gunfire. He didn’t know what to say, eyes were upon him from both groups.

“We’re here to help. If anyone here wishes to come back with us, you’re welcome too. Otherwise you are welcome to leave, and be free from the monsters that kept you here.” A few people stood and sprinted away, others slowly stood, and started collecting what appeared to be their belongings and they slowly departed as well. Oscar had no idea how many were here when this started, maybe 100, now it seemed 30 were left. After about 20mins of organizing and getting people on the cargo truck to transport, they were attracting lots of attention from their undead friends, the time to move was now. Oscar was by the back of the truck as the last couple families were being helped up.

“Why did you guys come here?” A man asked with his family behind him.

“We wanted to save you guys.”

“From what? This was our home you destroyed.” The man was becoming venomous.

“Hey! Your guys attacked us and kidnapped our people first!” Someone shouted from behind Oscar.

“I thought most of you had been kidnapped as well or forced into some sort of slave labor? That’s how it was explained to us.” Oscar was confused by this man’s reaction and trying to calm the tension obviously rising between each group.

“They kept us alive. We had nowhere else to go.” This conversation was getting worse.

“Hey!” Brian came up from behind Oscar. “They raped and beat your wife. They killed one of your daughters and as soon as she got old enough, they’d treat her just like the rest.” Brian was pointing at the 9 yr. old girl hiding behind her father. The man looked between the two. “Just don’t act like you did us any favors.” And he helped his daughter into the truck. Oscar turned slowly to get back up into the truck.

“Don’t listen to them Oscar.”

“But he’s right. We just came in here, killed a lot of people and blew away and burnt the only protection they’ve known.” He shook his head trying to fight the overwhelming emotions in his brain. “How are we any better than the guys that dragged them off in the first place?”

“Because they will see, they will learn what it is again to be free.” Brian walked closer and still had to look up at Oscar. “You guys are better than them, because you give these people choices. And hope.” He walked back towards the lead car with Andy. Oscar hopped up into the truck , Kurt was riding shot gun again, he had a bandage wrapped around his arm and holding a bandage up on his forehead.

“Oh my god what happened?”

“These guys got the drop on me, one had a knife and the other had a sledge hammer for a fist. I’ll be fine.” He turned to look at Oscar so he could see his blackening eye and cut on his brow. “Maybe not so pretty for a while though.”

“You’re still pretty to me. We gotta call Tom and Casey, see how things are going with them. Let them know our part of the mission is done.” Kurt grabbed the hand held. “Casey come in, this is storm troopers over.”

Jill and Kim were thrown on to the bed, Jill’s still healing shoulder screaming in agony, with watery eyes, they briefly looked at each other and nodded.

“Are you going to tell me your real name?” Luke rolled Jill on to her back to look down at her.

“Nope.” She said like nothing mattered in the world.

He slapped her three times in succession. Ran his hand down her front and tugged on her shirt to rip it. “Feisty bitch ain’t ya.”

“Only right, Now!” Jill and Kim sat up and brought there glass shards down, like hammers, on the nearest piece of flesh they could find. Kim went for the eyes, good girl, nailing the man dead center sending him flailing and screeching to high heaven. Jill using her injured shoulder only managed to catch Luke in his shoulder, as his reflexes were pretty quick and she was pretty slow at the moment. Both women got good shoves using their legs and the men went down like dorky dominos.

Grabbing Kim’s arm and pushing her in front of her out the door. “Come on Kim, run!” The screaming stopped from the one man, maybe he died. The women descended the stairs and saw the men were still sitting against the wall, confused Jill walked forward to get them to move out.

“Jill look out!” Jack called out too late. The butt of a rifle cold cocked Jill and she went down. Kim rammed her should hard into the man, fracturing her collar bone, but she took him to the ground. The men were up and grabbing the gun preparing for the pursuit from upstairs, Jack and Joe kicked and punched the man till he was unconscious.

“Come on let’s go!” Scott called out. Jack grabbed Jill as she was groggy.

Joe helped Kim up. “Ow my damn shoulder, crap it hurts.”

“Girly you were awesome!” As he took off his shirt to slip over Kim, he put his arm around her to help her outside. The running could be heard upstairs, and engines and vibrations could be heard outside. This caused Jack to pause. ”What if it’s more of them?”

Joe held on to Kim, “We’ll take our chances.” Joe reached and opened the door, he slipped by Jack as Scott started firing up the stairs. Jill was dead weight hanging on Jack, “Scott let’s go man.” Jack followed Joe and Scott came out right after. They were running in the middle of the street, tired, wounded, sore, as fast as they could. Knowing any minute the bad guys would be behind them. It looked like a scene from Black Hawk down, when the remaining soldiers make a run for safety through the streets. And the scene suddenly reflected a page from an Afghanistan battle, the burnt out cars, the shells of buildings left standing, and when they took cover behind a wrecked car and they spotted the Humvee down the street.

“Are you kidding me?!” Jack exclaimed.

Jill was coming around, she looked up to see Casey emerging from the back seat. “Its Casey, I told you they’d rescue us.” She said still dazed. Bullets were flying rapidly above their heads. The cement on the front and back of the car was being chewed up rapidly, the five of them tried to stay huddled low and out of harm’s way. Jill went flat on her stomach to crawl and try to peer around the front of the car back towards the house, but with all the yards grass being so weed filled and tall there was no clear line sight.

Ducking and flinching with every close bullet “Jesus it’s like Fallujah out here!” Bing, another close one hit the hood of the car by Joes’ head and he tried to sink lower.

The people had spread out from the Humvee, and they couldn’t be seen anymore by the people on the ground, but their weapons could be heard.

“When these guys reload, we should move.” Scott suggested. Waiting for a lull in the firing, they all assumed army crawl positions. “We’ll make our way to the other side of that car and we should be able to crouch low enough to make it all the way to the Humvee.” Jill said. A loud moan and a grubby hand caught them all off guard, a zombie. The zombie lurched forward catching them all in awkward positions, it grabbed Scott’s hair and tried to pull it up to its mouth. He screamed from the pain and tried to angle his rifle up, but to no avail. Jill acted quickly and managed to flip over on her back and spin quick to use her legs to push the thing back and away, giving Scott enough room to fire. He was bleeding from his head where the hair had ripped out. “Damn it that hurt!”

“You ok?”

“Yes let’s go before more come.” Everyone started crawling trying to keep the heads down and butts low. The pace was slow over the rubble and broken glass. The firing was slowing down, coming more sporadic, there were people moving in the grass and the small group hoped it was their people instead of more zombies or bad guys with guns. Shouting and incoherent talking could be heard over head, but they just ignored and kept crawling, finally reaching the other car. They were in better shape now, on the opposite side of the street, they had a clear path on the side walk and saw one of their own at the end of the block flagging them down.

“Scott, leave me the gun, I’ll cover you guys.”

“No we’ll all go together.” Jill was exacerbated at the moment. “Please give me the gun. You guys go, I want another shot at that guy.”

“Jill no!” Jack said with fear in his voice. Scott and Jill looked at each other before he reluctantly let go of the gun and grabbed Jack to go. Everyone else had already started, so they were farther ahead. Jill could see the other end of the street was blocked too, they had these guys surrounded, unless they cut through the back door.

Casey and Tom made their ways slowly through the ruined street, this one seemed to have more cars the usual on it, must have been a major road way at one time. The house was 100 yds. away, they were able take shelter along the other houses too, with the grass being so long, but you couldn’t linger, because there were often blind shots coming from both sides through the grass.