Undead Freaks (4 page)

And then what?
thought Frank.
Then where do we
run?
He figured they could get to that later. For now
they had to get away from the undead swarm.

Frank heard someone tumble behind him. He
turned and saw Kelly getting back up. Her hair was tangled and she
had dirt and leaves on her arms and knees. She started running
again. She'd forgotten the Remington in the car. Frank saw and
didn't like that, but there was no time to stop and go back for it.
The moans were coming at them, low and steady.

Hunger cries from the freaks were rising up
behind them.

Frank led them up the hill. It was hard going
on account of the physical effort but they didn't have a lot of
choices left.

Frank heard new footsteps tight behind them.
It was another set of running feet. He glanced back, hoping he
wouldn't see what he thought was there.

But there it was.

A zombie. No -- two of them. Running fast and
strong, pumping their arms at their sides. They were closing on
them. Their mouths were open, grimacing. Their eyes bulged from the
sockets.

Frank stopped and turned, bracing himself
against the trunk of a tree; he raised the rifle. Todd followed
suit with his service weapon, and Kelly ran up and crouched behind
Frank.

Frank took aim at the lead zombie. He shot
once.

Missed.

He shot two more rounds and one of them struck
home. Headshot.

The side of the zombie's face exploded and it
turned and dropped, landing on its good side. That left one more
freak, no more than fifty yards away. This one took cover behind a
tree.

Smart
, thought
Frank.
They're playing with us.

He motioned for Todd to cover him and he ran
to the side, around birch and pine. He wanted to flank it. He saw
movement and then more ominous shapes further down the hill. It
wasn't just the one they had to worry about. There were others. It
looked like the zombies were coordinating their attack. This was
shaping up to be a Very Bad Day.

Frank caught sight of one, this one standing
and crouching about ten feet off the ground in a tree. He swung the
rifle up in a smooth arc and took aim at its head and fired once.
The bullet entered its right eye and exploded out the back of its
head. It crashed to the ground.

Another one bites the
dust
, thought Frank.

Frank heard two more shots. He looked over at
Todd and there was a wounded freak with a hole in its chest limping
toward Todd and Kelly. The chest shot hadn't done much more than
slow it down a little. Its blood was thick and dark.

Frank's next thought was that when this whole
thing was over, if they made it through this, someone would have a
lot of splainin to do. The zombie looking to make a snack out of
Todd and Kelly used to be Mrs. Roberts, the gal who taught second
grade at the elementary school. Before today she'd been a nice
lady. A bake sale kind of girl.

But the Mrs. Roberts Frank knew from
parent-teacher conferences wasn't the same as the thing coming at
Kelly and Todd now. Frank took aim and shot a round that hit its
neck. Dark blood spurted from the wound. It jerked its head toward
him and tilted its head like a fighter that had just gotten clocked
a good one in the jaw.

Frank squeezed the trigger a second time. The
second bullet bullet smacked it through the ear and splattered its
undead brains against a pine tree. The brains were stuck to the
bark and pine needles in gray red clumps. The zombie dropped face
up with its mouth and eyes open.

Frank didn't know if they'd be able to outrun
these things. It would've been one thing if the zombies had been
dumb, but now it felt like they were being hunted. He tried to cool
it and think straight because that was the only way to get out of a
tight spot alive (he'd learned that in Fallujah during his tour in
Iraq) but that was getting harder by the minute. He looked over at
Kelly and she was on her ass, clutching her knees with her head
between them, shaking. That happened sometimes, raw panic taking
over.

"Todd," said Frank. "You take care of Kelly.
We're going upslope now."

Todd nodded and extended a hand to Kelly; she
looked up at him. She was shaking bad. He helped her to her feet
and she looked around her feet, looking for the gun. It was just
sinking in for her that she'd left it back at the car.

"This is it," said Frank. "Up we go." He led
the way up the tree-covered hill and he looked back to make sure
Kelly was right behind him, with Todd in trail. If they were being
hunted, the things had stopped coming at them at least for now. It
looked like maybe they were getting the message that Frank was a
crack shot with the AR in the daytime.

It didn't mean they could relax, but it bought
them a little time.

The going in the woods wasn't too bad. Pines
had a way of making forest easier to travel because the old brown
needles made thick mats that kept the other vegetation down. The
climbing uphill was starting to level out, too. They were making
good time now.

There was the sound of a distant explosion,
then a secondary. Frank stopped for a second to listen. It had to
be at least three miles away, toward the other side of town. It was
high explosive. If there were explosions then the Army was getting
serious about quarantine. Or maybe the zombies were getting more
creative with destruction. Frank thought it could be
either.

"What do we do next?" said Todd. "I mean, once
we reach the top?"

"Scope it out," said Frank. "See where the
smoke is coming from and move away from it."

"We still trying to make it to that airplane?"
said Todd.

"Only if it's in the right direction. I don't
want us going into the middle of a death trap."

After a while, they broke out of the woods and
they were up at a grey fire tower on a hill. Frank looked up at the
tower. It was abandoned and didn't get any official use, but that
didn't make it useless now. Frank looked at Todd. "I'm going up to
have a look. See if the airplane option is still worth
trying."

Frank went up the rickety metal stairs to the
top of the tower. They creaked. He smelled more smoke in the breeze
and he could see fires burning all over town. The smoke smelled
bad. He also thought he heard moans, distant ones getting carried
by the wind. How close were they? he wondered. Close enough to
reach out and touch? He still didn't know how the freaks were
tracking them. It might have been by scent, but he didn't know
enough about the things to be sure. He turned around and went back
down the tower, his boots making the whole structure resonate with
the clacking.

"How's it look?" said Todd.

"Like we might be able to make it to one of
those airplanes, if Kelly still thinks she can fly us out of here.
If we stay sharp on the way to the field, we might avoid running
into more freaks."

"Do we go right now?" said Kelly.

Frank shook his head. "No. Not right now.
Better to wait until dark. Better cover." Waiting till dark was a
double-edged sword. Frank figured they'd be able to avoid detection
better, but it would be harder to shoot back if they did get
spotted.

He looked up at the tower. As nice as it would
be to go up there to pass the time until nightfall, it might also
spread their scents far and wide. They were better off down low. If
they stayed at the base of the tower they'd have some buffer in the
clearing if zombies came up to them at night.

7

It was a long time until dark. And then when
the sun started to go down, there were noises around them. The wind
blowing branches and leaves and the sounds of squirrels jumping
around. It was enough to make Kelly startle more than once. She was
jumpy.

Frank wanted to go right then, right after the
sun went down. They all wanted to. But it was better to wait a
little longer. Full dark meant they'd be harder to see. There were
more explosions and automatic gunfire in the distance. The fighting
was getting more intense. But Frank thought it was weird that they
hadn't sent in any fast movers. The air cover wasn't running
interference. His only thought there was that whoever was in charge
was trying to avoid a panic. Jets had a way of terrifying a
civilian population. And if the outbreak was contained to town,
keeping it under control with ground troops only was a good way to
hide how bad it was from everyone on the outside.

They waited around the base of the fire tower,
Frank clutching the rifle. Todd looked at him. "I'm going up to
have a look," said Todd. "See if I can spot anything in the
dark.”

"You won't see much," said Frank. "Don't stay
up there too long."

"Yeah. Just a sec." Todd went up the stairs up
to the top of the tower. Kelly watched him climb up. He took big
steps, his legs looking thick and strong. She guessed that having a
purpose made it easier to deal with all this. She wished she had
one right now. She knew she was on the hook for flying the airplane
to get them out of this mess. That was, if the plane was still at
the Morrison place and it had fuel and none of the zombies had
gotten to it first. There were a lot of 'ifs' here.

One more thing: Kelly just now thought about
her husband. He was supposed to be at work at the dealership. But
there was no telling where he was now, or what had happened to him.
He might have made it out, but she wasn't hopeful. Maybe he was one
of them now. Or just plain dead. She didn't know how she felt about
that. But she did know that she didn't want to stick around town to
find out.

There was a clanking sound as Todd's boots hit
the metal steps on the way down. "Looks good from up there," he
said. "Some fires and activity but it looks to be on the borders
only. Nothing happening inside town."

Frank said, "Thanks for having a look. I don't
think we're going to get a better chance than right now. Let's
move."

Kelly sighed and stood up. She'd been sitting
Indian style. Her knees were stiff. "Thank God. I just want to get
the fuck out of here." She wanted a beer. A cold Shipyard straight
from the glass bottle.

"Yeah," said Frank. "There's a trail that goes
off this hill. Goes to the sand pit and then over Route 100 before
bringing us close to the Morrison place. Stay sharp. No talking. If
you see or hear something, you whistle. If they come running for
us, run like hell. Understood?"

Kelly and Todd shook their heads in agreement.
Frank said, "Kelly, you stay with me. Todd, you bring up the
rear."

The three of them started walking down the
hill. Frank was in front of Kelly by five paces and Todd held his
weapon out at the ready. They all thought they had a chance. And
maybe they did, if they were smart and lucky. They walked for
forty-five minutes, down the trail and over roots and rocks. None
of them tripped. They were getting into the rhythm of
it.

But it was at the bottom of the hill, when
they'd passed the sandpit and were walking by a white farmhouse
with dark windows and a red barn next to it, that they all heard
the scream. Then there were shots. The moans that weren't quite
human or animal came right after.

8

Frank didn't like it. He dropped to one knee
and held up the rifle to scan around them. He turned and motioned
for Todd and Kelly to stop moving. Kelly looked like she had terror
fatigue. Her eyes were glassy. She peed herself right
then.

There was movement over by the barn. The moans
seemed to be coming from there. There was another shot that cracked
through the night. Frank took Kelly's arm and moved toward the
sound. If he'd valued self preservation then maybe he would've gone
the other way. But this reaction was more training than anything.
There was someone in trouble over there, and he wasn't going to let
them face the undead on their own.

They ran to the edge of the barn, being as
quiet as they could. There was the smell of pig shit. Frank went
first. Kelly stayed behind them. Frank moved up the side of the
barn and then looked in, peering around the open door. It was like
looking into the mouth of a giant monster.

The light was dim. Two dead freaks were
face-down on the pine boards in the barn. Four live zombies were
looking up at the hayloft from below, making their sick hungry
moans and growls. There was something they wanted up there. Frank
looked up at the hayloft and saw a shadow move.

One of the freaks broke away and went to the
wall. There was a ladder hanging there. The freak started to take
it down. The damn thing was going to climb up for its meal with the
ladder. It made Frank shake his head. It wasn't supposed to happen
like this. Not even in the movies.

There was a defiant voice shouting from up in
the hayloft: "Stay back. I'll fucking kill you if you try to come
up here." It was a girl's voice. Frank thought she sounded young.
Maybe ten. She was telling off the freaks. She moved and Frank saw
she had a rifle.

The zombie at the ladder dragged it to the
other freaks. It was lifting it up to put it into position. Now it
was obvious it wanted to make a meal out of the girl. It might have
been smart enough to know that if the girl had had more ammo she
would have used it already.