This Dying World: The End Begins (31 page)

Chapter Forty-Three

The group huddled together to decide their next move.  I simply stared down the wide corridor between the barn and house, fixated on a small spot amongst the numerous unmoving bodies.  It didn’t look that far away, a mere twenty paces at best.  Twenty paces of gnashing teeth and living death.  A short run that changed the course of my life forever.

That would never happen again.

I was consumed with hatred.  Not only towards the man who took Abby from my family, but for the world that spawned him.  I hated where we had come from.  A place and time before the plague that gave birth to all the evil I had met since I left my home.  From the men who held us captive in that garage to the people who detonated those bombs.  If there was any luck left to be had, those who pressed the button are now nothing more than radioactive atoms floating around a zombie’s ass crack.

For all the dangers it is fraught with, this dying world had become a simpler place to exist.  I realized the so called “gray areas” in life wouldn’t mean much anymore.  Life was now black and white, life or death.  The lines between justice and revenge were permanently blurred, but punishment would be swift and absolute.

“You up for this?”  Chris broke me from my near trance.

“Does it matter?”

“No.  I suppose it doesn’t,” Chris leaned against Abby’s destroyed Honda next to the ambulance.  We watched Rosa and Joe disappear around the house.  I glanced to my left towards Matt, as he and Mark marched towards the back of the barn. “I just want you to think about what I know you are about to do.”

“Thinking is what let that bastard live long enough to do all this.” I waived my hand over the multitude of permanently dead corpses.  “Thinking is what led to that.”  I pointed my thumb behind me to where Abby lay.  “I’m done thinking.”

“In that case, you’re on point.”  He hefted his shotgun and we headed off.

The frozen tundra pooled with greenish black sludge that covered our boots as we walked between the buildings.  I felt no ill effects from the massive release of spores that had no doubt occurred.  I thought about what Chris had said earlier, about survivors becoming immune to it.  Maybe because we were all technically infected, the harmful effects were negated.  Not that it really mattered, nothing was going to stand between me and Adam.

“You coming?” Chris again broke me from my thoughts.  He was already ten feet ahead of me, his boots already painted in slushy gore.  “If you can’t do this, we can handle it.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.  “Just caught up in my thoughts.”

I stepped over the remains of yet another corpse.  It lay face down, but I could still tell the body of a little boy when I see it.  The decomposition was minimal, and if it wasn’t for the black veins stretching across its arms and legs like an interstate road map, it would appear like just another blonde headed ten year old kid.  A ten year old kid with a gaping hole leaking more of that damned greenish shit from its skull.

“Try not to look at them,” Chris said, looking back at me. “It helps.”

“It doesn’t matter.  They are just things we have to destroy,” I replied.

“I see.” He stared at me for a moment before turning away.

I looked along the length of the barn.  The barrage of bullets had riddled the wall with holes.  The door that I had plowed through hung from a single hinge.  It looked like the slightest wind would remove it completely from its frame.

“Hey, did anyone happen to check…”

A gunshot from Matt and Mark’s direction cut me off mid sentence.  We listened to see if the single shot was the end of it, or if there were bigger problems to deal with.

“Guys!”  Matt called out.  “A little help!”  A cascade of gunfire erupted from their direction.

We ran back the way we came, as careful as we could as not to slip in the zombie goo.  A quick right around the corner brought my two friends into view.  They were in retreat, walking backwards and firing.  We couldn’t see how many there were, but the noises coming from behind the barn left no doubt that there were still a good number left.

We were more than halfway there when the first of the undead appeared.  Most of the flesh had been removed from its neck, leaving its head nearly falling from its shoulders.  Matt sent a bullet through its chest, but the creature didn’t give it a second thought.  Matt’s next bullet caught the zombie through its eye.  Its head flopped backwards, exposing cracked vertebrae as it was sent tumbling down a small embankment.

Chris lined up a shot as a cluster of three women appeared.  Even for walking corpses, their gait was off.  It took a second glance before I realized the women were cuffed together at the wrists.  The woman the middle of the unholy chain gang had lost a leg and was being dragged along by the other two.  One of them growled at Chris as his shotgun spoke.  The pellets sheared through the side of her skull before imbedding themselves in the ear canal of the legless one.  The two lifeless females went down, taking the third to the earth with them.

I gazed at the third woman writhing on the ground.  Her companions lay dead in pools of their own fluids.  Yet, the hunger had consumed any part of her that would have mourned her friends.  She climbed over them and towards us without an inkling of remorse, gnashing her teeth as she tried to pull the other two with her.

I felt nothing towards it as I had with Gus that morning.  I no longer cared what it had once been, or who had cared about it.  It was a thing, and it was costing me valuable time.

It was in my way.

I marched past Chris and into his firing line.  I was within inches of the thing’s grasp when I fired.  The bullet punched through its forehead, exiting through the back of its neck.  It fell atop its former companions, twitching as its brain dissolved.

“What the hell are you doing!?” Chris angrily shouted.

“One!” I said under my breath.

My gun raised when the next zed appeared from around the corner.  “Two!” I growled as my Glock cracked.  An explosion of blood and brain followed, and the sack of dead flesh fell at my feet

“Dude!” Matt yelled.  “Get out of the way!”

“Damn it! Move!”  Mark admonished.  “You’re blocking my shot!”

There were at least seven sets of white eyes meeting me with terrible hunger when I finally stepped around the back of the building.  I grabbed the rotting wet shirt of the next closest creature, the fabric tearing as I pulled the zombie close.  It angled its head downward for a bite, but its teeth clamped down on my pistol instead.

“Three!”  I screamed until my head pounded.

At point blank range the bullet decimated the top of the zombie’s skull.  Gray chunks of brain splattered against the barn’s red wall, sizzling as they broke down into green sludge.  My Glock was holstered before the creature hit the ground.

One bullet left, and it was spoken for.

Zombies bunched up, their attention drawn completely to me.  I leapt over the corpse with the newly aerated skull, my hammer held high over my head until I brought it down on my next kill.  A skull smashed open like a brittle egg shell.  Whatever fluid that makes up these walking meat sacks shot from every hole in its face.  Eyes popped from their sockets, dangling on its now malformed face.

I didn’t wait for it to fall before moving on.  What happened next I can only remember only in pieces.  My hammer was alive, screaming through the air towards anything with a face.  Orange blurs swung from one rotten corpse to the next as I danced around their ever reaching claws.

My arms burned from exertion, but the hammer wanted more.  I wanted more.  Any mercy I had left had died with Abby, and death would be dealt with indiscriminate fury.  Her image burned in my mind with each creature that fell.  There was not an inch of my body that was not covered in their gore.  Yet, I wanted more.  I wanted to kill them all.

A shot went off next to my head.  I felt cold splatter on the side of my face, but it didn’t register to me.  I wasn’t finished.  There was one more in front of me.  I gripped the handle with both hands, taking a batter’s stance.  I screamed a primal scream as I swung, imbedding the hammer deep within its skull.

Something grabbed my shoulder.  I spun with my fist cocked back.  Someone else grabbed my wrist before my fist flew.  I kicked out towards anything that looked human.  I was thrown against the barn, shoulders pinned back to the wall.  A bright flash appeared before my eyes as Chris’ backhand caught me across my face.  He brought his forearm to my throat, and pressed his weight against me until I was completely immobile.  He was out of breath, face red and breathing heavily through clenched jaws.

“Are you fucking crazy!?” he exploded.

“Let me go,” I spat through my own clenched jaws.

“Not a chance!”  His arm dug deeper into my throat.  I felt light headed as my air supply was suddenly cut in half.  “Not until you get your head wired back together!”

“I’m going to kill them all!” I pushed back, but only succeeded in choking myself against his unyielding forearm.  Darkness ringed my vision as unconsciousness crept across my brain.

“You’re going to kill yourself!” he screamed.  Chris will deny it to this day, but I saw a tear trickled down his mud caked cheek.  “Then what good are you?  To me?  To Katie?  What about to all the people you brought here who fought every damned day to keep you alive?  You want to spit in their faces too!?  Do you think Abby would want this?!”

“Abby’s dead!” As soon as the words escaped, they came back and punched me in the gut.  “Abby’s dead,” I whispered.  Chris pulled away, my two lifelong friends releasing their restraining grips.  Soul crushing grief pushed me down the wall until I sat on the viscera covered snow.

“Abby’s…dead,” I whispered again before finally succumbing to the grief that had been building since Chris led me out of the ambulance.  I sobbed deeply, my tears flowing like rivers down my face.  I didn’t think they would ever stop, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to.

“I know bro.  I know,” Chris hunched in front of me.  He put his hand on my shoulder, and waited.  Matt sat beside me, his face twisted in disgust when something under him squished.

“Dude, Adam’s going to pay for this,” Matt said.

“Fuckin A right he will,” Mark added.

“Everyone here loved Abby like she was family,” Chris said.  “I can’t even begin to imagine what you are going through, but no one here’s going to let you kill yourself.”

“Damn right.  Dude, I’ll shoot you myself before I would lose Abby and you on the same day,” Matt said.

“That doesn’t make a bit of fucking sense whatsoever.” I looked at Matt with an eyebrow raised.  He simply shrugged his shoulders and cracked a smile.  In spite of myself, I laughed.  Before I knew it, we were all laughing.  It was an uncomfortable laugh, but it was laughing all the same.

“He doesn’t have to make sense,” Mark laughed as he helped me up.  “He’s Mattmann.”

As Chris reached down to help Matt to his feet, a thundering gunshot echoed across the fields.  We looked back and forth at each other, our laughter coming to an abrupt halt.

“Joe’s gun?” I asked.

“No,” Chris replied.  “That was a shotgun.”

We were running before Chris finished his answer.  We skimmed along the back wall, Chris in front, me shortly behind with the other two behind me.  We got to the corner, and Chris waved for us to stop.  He put his finger to his lips for us to be silent, and brought his weapon to his shoulder.  Ducking his head, he crept around the corner, and stopped.

“Not another step!” Adam shouted.

“He shot Joe!”  It was Rosa’s teary voice.

“Yes I did,” Adam laughed.  A cold anger swept over me at the sound of his voice.

“You’re a dead man,” Chris’ voice was steel.

“Right again Captain America!” Adam laughed again.  “But not before I blow this bitch’s brains all over the ground if the rest of you don’t come out.”

I looked back at my friends, and nodded.  I walked around the corner with only my hammer in hand.  Adam stood in the middle of the driveway.  He had Abby’s shotgun pressed against the back of Rosa’s head.  Her coat was missing, standing in only jeans and a light blue button up blouse.  She cried openly, her arms wrapping around her shivering body.

Adam was sweating, his face glistening in the dreary gray afternoon light.  A gash on his forehead oozed dark blood.  Dark lines stretched from the wound and across his pale skin.  His teeth chattered behind blue lips.  One look at him, and I knew.

“He’s infected,” I said.

“And it’s your fault, asshole!” he spat.

“How is it my fault?!” I demanded.  “How is any of this my fault?!”

“You come rolling in here like you own the fucking place.  Everyone starts treating you like top dog, and you didn’t do shit around here but lay around.  You turned everyone against me!  I worked my ass off here, this was my crib, and you forced me to leave!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”  Chris responded.  “This is my house!  My property!  You fucked up and got yourself thrown out!”

“Shut the fuck up army man, I wasn’t talking to you!”  Adam pushed the shotgun barrel into the back of Rosa’s head.  “Put your guns on the ground, or she’s dead.”