The Dead Don't Bleed: Part 2, The Aftermath (10 page)

"Miranda, come on. Inside." He called out to her as he took several steps away from the door with his rifle raised and ready to take up the slack once she retreated from her covering position.

Miranda didn't need
any more encouragement, she knew that she was on her last magazine of ammo and that she didn't stand a chance of stemming the flow of zombies moving towards them. She had only hoped to at least keep them at bay long enough for them to reach the kitchen and make a run through the house to the storm room in the basement. Doug has assured all of them that the room had already stood the test against zombies trying to break in the door and that it hadn't even suffered more than a dent or two against their relentless attempts to enter. Firing off one last shot, she turned back towards the house and raced to the doorway where Doug was still down on a single knee struggling to catch his breath.

"Take care of him, get him into the shelter." Garrett told her as she ran past him. Reaching Doug
, she turned back towards him and he saw the concern in her eyes before she asked the question, "Don't worry, no heroics on my part. I am just going to cover Calvin's ass and we will be right behind you."

Turning back toward the yard, Garrett spotted Calvin still working his way slowly towards the kitchen door. He was alternating back and forth between the zombies spilling across the open ground between the two houses and those rushing up the driveway towards him. The hedgerow had turned out to be a natural obstacle that they seemed to have trouble trying to push their bodies through. There were now at least twenty of them lined up along the far side of the hedge
s trying to force their way across. With the chase from that direction temporarily slowed, their biggest threat became the driveway and the zombies in that direction had no such obstacles to impede their full on rush towards them. From the back of the house he could see a dozen of them that had reached the top of the driveway and knew that even more were probably just out of sight coming on hard to reach them.

"CALVIN! Come on, get inside!" Garrett yelled out as he let loose a single round into a very fit colored man wearing what looked like bums clothing and seemed oddly out place in this area. He thought it possible that the creatures were already starting to migrate from other parts in search of food. His round caught the bum on the very top of his head and carved out a groove through his hairline but did little else to thwart his approach. Garrett adjusted slightly and fired again, this time hitting the man just about the eyebrow and blowing the entire top half of his head free from its body. Calvin turned back towards
the house and started running full speed towards Garrett. After he took only a dozen or so steps he raised his rifle again, this time at a point just behind Garrett and called out. Garrett had just fired off another two shots when Calvin started yelling out to him and the words were swallowed up by the thunderous blast of the rifle next to his head.

Garrett saw Calvin aiming his rifle
aiming somewhere right behind him and he whirled around in time to see the wood line on the far side of Doug's house coming alive with another group of zombies. Six of them were already clear of the trees and into the backyard only a hundred or so feet from the kitchen door while he could see even more movement still inside the tree line behind them. It was like a three pronged assault and if he didn't know better he would have thought that there was actually some form of higher intelligence involved in just how the zombies were pushing in on them. If they had timed the maneuver a little better they would have been able to catch them out in the open yard between the two houses. Even without that proper timing they still had them in one hell of a pinch, any thought of leaving the house any time soon was now out the window. If Doug's storm room in his basement was not as secure as he had told them, they would not survive the next few minutes when all of those zombies continued their pursuit into the house and stacked up against the door. Garrett realized that they had no other option now, Miranda and Doug had already disappeared inside the house and he would not be able to get to them in time if they were all to try and make a break in another direction. Even if they were able to take that option, Doug would never make it to the edge of his own yard. He had only known the guy for a very short period of time but there was no way he could allow any human being to fall victim to the fate that awaited if those zombies got their hands on him.

Calvin
also realized that they were trapped; he had given up trying to hold back the zombies coming up the driveway and was now running hard towards the back of the house. As soon as Calvin passed him by, Garrett rapidly retreated in reverse, firing off aimed shots as he went. He passed through the smashed remains of the back doors, evidence of a prior group of zombies having forced their way into the house while giving chase to the neighbor's son whom Doug had taken in and given shelter. The broken glass and twisted remains of the door frame made for a slippery and treacherous entry into the house and caused them to slow down and watch their footing as they navigated through it. It was the sight of that broken and smashed doorway that made Garrett hope they were making the right decision in trusting that Doug's shelter was as secure as he had bragged. Once they were all inside that basement with only a single set of stairs leading back out, they were trapped and there was no obstacle on the outside of that house to prevent the house from filling with undead behind them.

Garrett heard Doug's feet already pounding down a wooden staircase off to the right side of the k
itchen and he vaulted over an overturned kitchen chair in a mad dash for the doorway to the basement. His last image of the kitchen before crossing the threshold was a picture of several zombie eyed faces just starting to appear in the tattered remains of the back door with many more visible beyond them. He took the stairs to the basemen two at a time and once he reached the bottom frantically snapped his head left and right searching the vast expanse of the basement for the storm room.

"Over here!" Miranda shouted off to his left.

Garrett spotted her peeking out from a small hallway cut into a far corner of the basement. He would have never noticed it had she not called out to him; the entire wall on that side of the basement simply appeared to be the far boundary of the basement. The short hallway leading into the entrance was strategically placed for just that purpose. A casual inspection of the downstairs and it would easily be missed. A basement living area rarely encompassed the same square footage of the floor above it so it would not be unusual for the area that was visible to be mistaken for the limits of the living space on this level. Frantic footfalls and the crashing of belongings on the floor above told him that zombies were inside and already starting to fill the floor over his head with their numbers. The first sounds of moaning and crashing footsteps in the narrow stairwell into basement told him that they had followed his movements and were coming for him. Garrett hurdled over a sectional sofa and around the corner of the short hallway where Miranda had disappeared. He found the hallway contained nothing but a single open doorway and he stepped quickly inside. Calvin was waiting just inside the door and as soon as Garrett stepped through, he slammed the door closed and snapped all three locks closed.

It was just starting to get dark when Kyle decided to head back to the
Ranger Station to check on the girls again. He had spent most of the day walking an alternating wide and then narrow path around the perimeter of the building and returning to check on Shellie and Kimberly. Since her outburst earlier that day Kimberly had remained asleep in a restless slumber. Her fever had finally started to settle down but Shellie had told him that she was still prone to mumbling in her sleep as if in the grip of a nightmare. The last time he had checked in with Shellie the two of them had tried to wake Kimberly up long enough to at least take in a couple drinks of water. She had spit out everything they managed to get in her mouth and had started to fight against them again so they had abandoned that effort and allowed her to fall back to sleep.

He could just make out the shape of the
Rangers Station through the trees when something in the waning light of dusk caught his eyes. The path all of them had been walking through the woods over the last several days had been fairly established after the first day and by now had worn down to a clear dirt trail winding its way through the woods. They had not been concerned about the fresh paths announcing their presence in the area; their enemy was not one that they thought had the ability to reason and therefore would not understand the significance of an obviously new trail that had popped up suddenly. He had also grown accustomed to the tread patterns along the path from himself, Garrett and Calvin as well as the occasional smaller prints where one of the girls had tagged along with them. What caught his attention was a set of footprints that looked out of place from the others and he stopped for a moment while studying them. All of the prints he had been so accustomed to seeing moved in one direction or another along the trail, this set cut across the trail from left to right. Judging by the depth of the heel marks he figured it had been a male, probably close to two hundred pounds. He thought for a second that maybe the marks had been left by Garrett or Calvin stepping off the trail at one point to make use of the trees for a makeshift bathroom. Something about that scenario bothered him though and he couldn't quite figure out what it was. As many times as he had passed by this part of the trail that single oddity had not attracted his attention. He was not much of a woodsman and had only been camping and fishing a few times, but even then it was at well-established camp grounds in state parks with well-worn trails used by hundreds of others before him. He was about to chalk it up to him just being tired and the failing light of the closing day causing him to see things a little differently when it suddenly occurred to him that he had been the only person walking that particular path since morning. The footprints crossing the path and leading into the woods were over top of ones that he easily recognized as coming from his police issued boots which left a very distinct and recognizable pattern in the worn dirt. Whoever had made the footprints had done so after he had made his last pass along the path and the direction of the prints indicated they were heading straight for the Rangers Station.

"Shit." Kyle exclaimed as the implication
suddenly became crystal clear. Forgetting the path altogether, he moved quickly into the wood line following after the new footprints. Through a break in the trees he spotted a fleeting shadow darting out from the trees in front of the station and moving across the open ground towards the small wooden porch. He raised the rifle to his shoulder and was just about to fire off a shot when he checked himself. Two things made him hold his fire. The first was his natural police instinct that his target was not clear enough to confirm that it was a threat. It could possibly be Shellie out looking for him or just getting some air, but he thought it unlikely, the figure was larger than either of the girls, he was pretty sure it was a man. He thought it was also possible that Garrett or Calvin had returned without his knowledge. The second thought that occurred to him was that if he fired now, the echo of that single shot would carry for a long distance through the woods, more so now that it was approaching dusk. Dropping the rifle back to his side he continued moving as quickly as possible through the woods getting closer to the swatch of open ground in front of the shack.

The trees were thinning in front of him but the light was also fading faster at that point. He could see movement on the porch just in front of the door and it was at that point that he knew for sure that it wasn't Garret, Calvin or any other
living human being. The awkward and drunken gait was what gave it away as well as the apparent confusion on how to get inside the shack. Anyone with half their senses intact would have simply just tried the door as soon as they climbed the stairs to the porch, in this case their visitor staggered from one end of the porch to the other searching for a way inside. By the way its head kept tipping up skyward every few seconds, Kyle could tell that it was a zombie that had picked up a scent and was following it to its source. None of them understood exactly how that worked, why they picked up some scents from a great distance away and were able to follow it accurately while in other cases they didn't seem capable of sniffing out nearby humans. This one must have walked within only a few feet of him in the woods and never detected his presence. Something about one or both of the women inside the shack must have been more appealing to the creature. Kyle could already see what was about to happen, the door had been left cracked open just a bit, something that Shellie had taken to doing so she could hear outside in case he called for her. The zombie must have finally noticed the thin sliver of light coming from inside the shack and pushed his body up against the opening and in an instant disappeared from sight inside the station.

Kyle started running towards the front porch as fast as he could. Stealth was no longer a consideration at this point. The zombie was already inside and it would actually be better if the creature detected him and came back out to meet him in the open. H
e considered shouting at least a warning to Shellie but then stopped himself at the last second. If he called out the chances were good that Shellie would respond in some way, either by making noise with sudden movement or crying out to him and give away their location before he could reach them. There was still a chance that the zombie wouldn’t head directly to the room where both women were. The extra few seconds it spent searching elsewhere for the source of the scent it was following might be the difference between life and death for the ladies.

Kyle's foot had just stepped down on the first step leading up to the front porch when Shellie's first terrified scream of abject terror sent cold shivers down his spine.

#

Garrett took in the landscape of the storm shelter that Doug had basically turned into his own private man
cave to give him some peace and quiet away from his wife and her every growing annoying habits. There was a small well-worn sofa that looked much more comfortable that the stuffy, high end furnishings more common to houses in this zip code. There was a modest coffee table separating the couch from an impressively sized flat screen TV set into a second hand entertainment center along with a video game system and an extensive collection of games set neatly along a bottom shelf. Garrett found it surprising that Doug would be the type to spend time playing video games like a teenager. He had him pegged more for the type to sit by himself and read through medical journals and writing articles or something more along those lines. Behind the couch there was a pile of blankets and pillows spread out on the floor showing signs of the room having being used as a makeshift shelter. More blankets and pillows on the couch itself indicated where Doug's wife most likely had been sleeping. From what Garrett had gathered, she was not the type willing to join the common folk on the floor. The next indicator that the room had been used as a hideout for several days was the smell. It was not just normal body odor funk that comes from people put in close proximity to one another without the benefit of a showering for some time. There were several other unpleasant aromas intermixing to form an almost noxious plume of stagnant air throughout the room, he recognized the smell of trash as well as the unmistakable scent of human waste. The three people living in this room had turned it into a cesspool of human decay. Garrett thought that it actually stood as a testament to just how quickly people were capable of returning to their animal roots when faced with a rapid decline of societal norms. He hoped that this was not the life that all of them should eventually expect to find themselves facing.

It was less than five seconds after Calvin had closed and locked the door to the storm shelter that the first loud and forceful banging against it began. Garrett could actually see the door moving slightly against its frame as it was pummeled from the outside over and over by any number of zombies.
Considering the layout of the basement he realized that by putting the entrance in that little hallway instead of on the face of the far wall had saved their lives. Only a handful of zombies would be able to press themselves into that narrow hallway at any one time. This would not allow them to get more than a couple hundred pounds of actual pressure built up against the outside of the door. If the door had been on the face of the long wall and directly accessible to the more spacious and open area of the basement, dozens if not hundreds of the creatures would have been able to press their combined weight against it all at once and likely knocked it clear of its hinges in short order.

Standing shoulder to shoulder
, Garrett and Calvin kept their rifles up and aimed towards the door as the banging increased in intensity. They had barely noticed the other two occupants in the shelter when they made their hasty entry, but now Garrett started to pick up on a heated discussion just over his shoulder in the back corner of the small space. Glancing behind him he saw Doug standing toe to toe with a woman he assumed was his wife. Garrett was never one to pass judgment on anyone by their looks and appearance alone, but he thought this was a good opportunity to make an exception to that rule. He knew instantly that he wasn't going to like this woman. He could see just pure bitch written all over her pudgy face and by the way she was already jumping down Doug's throat after all that they had been through he could tell that her husband’s well-being, not to mention that of a group of strangers that he had suddenly appeared with, was the last thing on her mind. Even with zombies just outside the door and pounding to get inside, he could hear the woman arguing with her husband not only about returning without the food he had left for but she also seemed pissed off about him bringing some little 'hussy', as she called it, into her home. Garrett could only assume she was referring to Miranda's presence and not making any effort to hide that fact with Miranda standing only five feet away from the couple.

They had just been through an experience where any of them could have easily been killed or served up as a snack to a throng of blood thirst zombies and this woman's attitude was just a little bit more than Garrett was willing to stomach at the moment. The beating and pounding of fists against the outside of the door only a few feet away did nothing to muffle her on going barrage against her husband
. Doug was evidently too shell-shocked to do much about it and stood meekly by listening to her abuse while staring quietly at the floor.

"I think that is just about enough for the moment if you don't mind."
Garrett said with his voice raised high enough to override what she was saying and also be heard over the pounding of undead flesh on the outside of the shelter door.

Emily
whirled her head towards him as if it was on a swivel, her mouth still open as the next string of obscenities and belittlements towards her husband froze in place with the bewilderment that a stranger in her own house would have the balls to talk to her like that. For a second or two she appeared lost for words as she just studied Garrett and sized him up like a matador staring down a bull he was about to do battle with.

"Excuse me, sir." That last part was spit out with no attempt at respect but instead it was her first shot across his bow letting him know that
she was not impressed with him.

"
You are a guest in my home. I would appreciate it if you would consider that before you raise your voice at me again." She spit that out with a venom that she made no attempt to hide. Without waiting for his reply she turned back around and with a renewed vigor started right back in on her husband about bringing rude and disrespectful people into her home.

Garrett was about to take a step towards the woman and confront her further when the banging against the door reached an even more fevered pitch and he felt his attention was better served standing ready in case they suddenly found themselves with a flood of zombies forcing their way through another broken door. Miranda on the other hand felt no such restraint
. She felt a surge of adrenaline welling up inside her along with an added dose of anger towards what she had just witnessed between Emily and Garrett. Balling her fists tight along her sides she stepped in between Doug and his wife and started right in on her.

"You ungrateful fat bitch! Do you have a clue what all of us just went through outside? Do you have even the slightest hint of understanding a
bout what is going on out there?" She yelled in the woman's face while gesturing towards one of the small half-moon shaped windows providing the sole source of illumination into the room. "That guest in your home that you just rudely dismissed like some piece of shit on the bottom of your shoe saved your husband’s life and has saved all of our lives several times over already. He is now standing by that door ready to do the same thing for you and all you can do is bitch and complain at your husband for not bringing you another box of fucking Twinkies. What the hell is wrong with you?!"