The Dead Don't Bleed: Part 2, The Aftermath (12 page)

"Cameron, the Range Rover in your garage, do you know where the keys are for it?" Garrett asked hopefully. If all of them could get into the house together they should be able to hold their ground in the garage long enough to load the SUV with their supplies and then make a run for it. One or more of them trying to go off on foot after his truck and then returning was a much riskier proposal.

Cameron looked off the side for a moment as he thought about the question, "Yeah, sure. My dad keeps a basket on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen, he keeps his phone, wallet, keys and other junk in there. It’s right next to laundry room by the garage door."

Bingo! Garrett saw renewed hope for them. The last thing he had to worry about was if the truck had
enough gas in it to still be useful. He wouldn't think anyone living in this type of neighborhood was like him in pushing their gas gauges to as close to the empty line as possible before finally dropping in a few bucks worth of gas here and there, but it was something to consider.

"That’s
great news! We can take the Range Rover and make a quick getaway with minimal risk." He looked again towards Calvin standing several feet of to the side but still in front of the door and keeping a steady vigil with his rifle held loosely in his hands but ready at a moment’s notice. "However, I think we are going to have to spend at least a long and hungry night trapped in here before those things loose interest and move off before we risk making our move."

The light in the room had faded noticeably in the short time since they had closed the door behind them, dusk
was rapidly descending on them. They were going to have to ride out at least one night in that foul smelling room and hope that by the first light of a new day the banging on the door would have stopped and they could make a break for it.

Kyle's feet never touched another step as he propelled his body up and onto the porch and through the open door
into the ranger station. He skidded slightly as he negotiated the turn at the doorway towards the small bunkroom where Shellie was even locked in a hand to hand struggle with the zombie that had just found its way inside the station. Shellie's initial scream had turned into a long drawn out cry of panicked desperation. He burst into the opening of the door and found Kimberly laying still and undisturbed in her bunk on one side of the room, the action was happening just across the room from her on the other narrow cot. Shellie was lying across the bunk sideways, her head pressed up against the far wall while her feet remained planted firmly albeit at an inconvenient angle on the floor along the side of the bed. The zombie was directly over her, his body almost laying completely on the bed with his head close to the pillow and one foot flailing along the bottom of the bunk. He was on top of Shellie and working hard to move in for a bite at her face or neck. She made managed to grab the small plastic tray they had been using for drinks and food as a shield pressed up against the zombies face as she fought with all of her strength to push on the back of the tray and keep his face clear of her exposed skin. The zombie had at least a hundred pounds on her and was probably only seconds away from getting around her attempts at shielding herself with the thin plastic tray.

Kyle took in the scene in under a second, shooting the zombie was out of the question. Not only was there a very good chance the round would pass through its head with enough velocity to also deliver a mortal wound to Shellie's upper body or head, the sound of the shot inside that shack would echo for miles around and they would have much more company in a very short period of time. He took the only action left open to him at that point. Reaching into the fray with both hands
, he grasped the zombie by his shoulders and pulled back hard with all of his weight, launching himself backwards onto his ass in the doorway with the zombie falling over top of his body with his back towards him. As soon as they both hit the floor the weight of the zombie pressed hard against Kyle's chest and forced the air from his lungs causing him to see red and begin gasping for breath. The creature had suffered no such limitation and he thrashed against Kyle trying to flip over towards him. They were pressed into the doorway with the bulk of their bodies still constrained between the frames of the two bunks in the room, one with Kimberly still tossing and turning in her restless slumber and the other with Shellie gasping for breath and trying to recover from her own struggle with the zombie. The tight confines on the floor between the metal frames of the two bunks prevented the zombie from simply turning around and lunging after Kyle while he was still vulnerable. The zombie was thrashing from side to side and slamming his shoulders and upper torso against the beds making no progress in his efforts to turn towards his surprise attacker. Had the zombie retained the slightest ability to reason and think things through, he would have figured out quickly that if he had just slid his body forward several inches he would have could have freed himself and turned on Kyle with ease. It was that lack of ability to think that saved Kyle from losing the fight as soon as it had started. While the zombie wasted its time trying to fight against the unyielding metal frame of the bunks, Kyle started to regain his senses enough to realize just how close he was to having the zombie flip around and come at him face first. He wrapped his meaty arms around the zombie’s midsection and pulled it tighter against his own body in a bear hug, giving it even less room to maneuver. He now had the zombie somewhat under control but was also stuck in that position. It was going to come down to who tired out first and Kyle was pretty sure that he would be on the losing end of any bets on that.

"Shellie!" He cried out. It was a desperate move, he couldn't imagine what she could possibly do to help him but if he couldn't get her to try something it was likely the zombie would eventually kill him and then be free to resume his attack on her. With both of them
blocking the door, Shellie couldn’t get out of the small room without taking a big chance on coming very close to the snapping jaws of the zombie. It was a bad situation for them, if Kyle fell victim to the zombie, both Shellie and Kimberly would be easy pickings. One of his biggest fears about that scenario was that if he were to fall victim to a bite, then it was also possibly that he himself would turn and begin to hunt the rest of their group.

Shellie
realized the predicament they were in at the same time Kyle did, she couldn't get out of the room without getting bit, and even if she did, she would be leaving Kyle and Kimberly behind to face a certain death. The zombie would eventually wear Kyle down and be able to turn the tables on him, all Kyle was capable of doing at that moment was to continue holding on as tight as he could and keep that deadly mouth clear of any parts of his own body. She had to act decisively in the next several seconds or all of them were going to die right there. She frantically searched all around her for anything she could use as an improvised weapon. Her shotgun was out in the main room next to the door but even if she had it she would not have been able to use it in the tight confines of the room, the spray from the shot would have caught Kyle without a doubt and possibly even Kimberly along her lower body. Kyle's rifle was still slung over his shoulder, but it was out of her reach with his upper body pressed back into the door jam. As she scanned the room her eyes fell on the serving tray lying next to her on the bunk that she had been using as a shield to protect herself from the zombies bite. Before the zombie had walked in on her and Kimberly, that tray had been sitting on the bed next to her with the remains of her MRE dinner, heated over a small sterno can in the other room as well as a drink for both her and Kimberly. She had never been able to rip open the thick plastic bag that contained the MRE meals with her bare hands and had taken to using a pair of scissors she had been lucky to find inside one of the drawers in the outer room. Those scissors had also been on the tray when the contents were knocked off in her struggle with the zombie. She started searching the room frantically for them while calling out to Kyle at the same time.

"Hang on Kyle, I think I have an idea."

His reply was strained and desperate, "Whatever it is, hurry up. I can't hold on much longer."

She knelt down and search under both beds finding some remains of her meal and one of the cups, but no scissors. She stood and backed against the far wall of the room to look over the bed she had been on. The sheet and thin blanket had been stripped off the bed when Kyle had fallen backwards with the zombie and were now hanging off the opposite end of the bed and out of her reach. Her eyes fell on Kimberly still sleeping away through everything in the other bed and that was when she spotted one of the black handles sticking out from a fold in the blanket covering her. She reached down and snatched the scissors up while at the same time taking two steps forward and one to the side, putting her just a bare inch from the limit of the zombies grasping arms. Its eyes closely followed her every movement, a string of yellow puss that resembled drool oozed from a corner of its mouth as it anticipated a fresh meal almost within its grasp. She tracked the
zombie’s movements and noticed a discernible pattern in how it was flailing out towards her. She knew that once she moved in for her attack she would have only one shot and it had to be accurate and fatal right away. There was a brief period where the zombies left arm would move down towards her crotch and then back up towards her face. While that arm was lowered she had the smallest window of opportunity to make her move. Her body weight should be enough to keep his left arm pinned down against his lap but he would still be able to reach her with his right arm. If her strike was fast enough though it shouldn't matter.

"Hurry!" Kyle cried out. Shelli
e could see his face turning red, his shirt soaked in sweat from the exertion of holding the struggling zombie in place and she heard the evident strain in his voice, all of it telling her that he was reaching the last of his strength reserves.

The blades of the scissors were small and cheap, not strong enough to penetrate any hard surface, leaving her with the eyes as her only possible target. Even th
en she was not totally sure the blade would strike far enough into the zombies head to destroy enough brain to kill it, but it was her only shot. She watched as the zombie went through the pattern of arm flailing once across his lap, down and pause and then up and out across the higher axis. As the arm dropped back down towards his lap she leapt forward and crashed the side of her body into his. As soon as she felt her shoulder hitting his chest she rammed the scissors down hard towards his face lining up on his right eyeball. She felt his strong right forearm starting to wrap itself around her back and pull her in tighter as he began to tilt his head and dip his mouth towards her should going right in for a quick bite. She had anticipated that particular turn of the head and her plunging arm was already adjusting to meet the zombie’s eye as its mouth was only an inch or so from making contact with her. The zombie had been a little quicker than she had anticipated and she felt its jaw starting to clench down tight onto her collar at the same instant that her hand made solid contact with his face and drove the scissors into its eye. The blade hit the puss filled orb in the lower corner and barely a centimeter above where she would have struck the hard bone of its outer eye socket. She felt the slightest resistance against the metal tips of the scissors as they pushed against the cloudy eyeball. With the cutting edges closed they were stronger but the tip was also flatter, covering a wider area instead of having the puncture ability of a single blade. For a second she thought that the tip of the scissors would only push the eyeball backwards into the socket and not actually punch through to reach the brain beyond. There was no time to retreat her arm and attempt a more forceful thrust so she pivoted her body into the creatures face to put more of her weight into the thrust. Even though she didn't intend for it to happen, that small movement saved her life. Instead easily sinking its teeth into on her collarbone, the zombie’s mouth slid along the rigid bone in the direction of her turn and sailed clear of her shoulder to chomp down on empty space right next to her arm. With the extra little bit of body weight she was able to drive into her thrust the scissors punched through the eyeball with a sickening pop, sending a spray of putrid fluids across the side of Shellie's face. Undaunted by the oozing eyeball puss running down her cheeks, she continued her drive forward and pushed the scissors as far into the ruined eye socket as the handles would allow. The moment she felt resistance she started shaking her hand rapidly up and down in an attempt to mangle as much of the brain matter the blunt ended tip of the scissors had come in contact with. The pressure against her back from the crushing force of the zombies arm started to subside as she mixed up a slab of brain matter as if she was scrambling an egg. The zombie's body started to convulse and then stiffened, its hold across her back relaxed as his arm dropped to the side.

Shellie pushed herself free from the zombie and backed into the room where she could stand back up and lean against the frame of the bed while she recovered from the episode. Kyle pushed the slumped body of the zombie off his lap and slid backwards out of the bunkroom until his back ran into the desk
in the center of the large open entryway. He remained sitting on the floor while he struggled to catch his breath and regain his composure.

#

It had taken the better part of the day to get the USS Abraham Lincoln and the Los Angeles class nuclear powered attack submarine, the USS Cheyenne, geared up and ready to steam north to take up a position one hundred miles off the coast of Northern Virginia. The aircraft carrier was the linchpin for the mission with its ability to launch flights deep into the mainland. No other surface ship would be involved in the mission for fear that airborne contamination could possibly reach even that far out to sea. The Abraham Lincoln had been reduced to a skeleton crew with all personal not completely essential for the operation of the ship or flight operations removed to temporary shore side duties at Guantanamo. An additional compliment of seventy five personnel with training in decontamination procedures, twenty five ground troops equipped and trained to operate in chemical and biological environments as well as scientific staff from the segregated science compound at the far end of the Guantanamo complex were airlifted aboard the carrier to support the operations. Sending a national asset like an aircraft carrier into any form of potential hazard dictated that some form of support accompany it. Since the danger in the case of this particular mission was not from any potential armed adversary the presence of only the Cheyenne was deemed sufficient. The mission of the sub was to remain submerged on station near the carrier at all times and in constant radio contact. If radio contact was lost or the sub was able to determine that the carrier's crew had become infected and attempted to return to Cuba or the surrounding waterways. It was ordered to disable the carrier before it could reach any Caribbean islands or within helicopter range of Cuba. The sub was not only tasked with that unsavory task but it was also carrying two teams of navy SEAL's and a specialized submersible for transporting the SEAL's to the carrier. If a portion of the carrier was compromised and the crew was able to compartmentalize the effected sections, the SEAL's would respond to the carrier in full biological protective gear and make an assessment of whether or not the carrier was deemed safe to be allowed to return to port in Cuba. Keeping the SEAL's segregated on board the submarine ensured they were not comprised and could make an impartial determination if the carrier was truly safe to be allowed to return.