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  Kara shouted, “We’ve got more coming in from my way.”

  I saw in the distance the hallway filling with the undead. Where had they come from? Were they in the basement in nests like the ones we had just flushed out? Did we just get lucky and get a wandering horde? It didn’t really matter because they were here, and so were we — stuck in a press of undead on all sides.

  “Joel, get with Brandon,” Greg shouted. “We need to make a way through that smaller group and run for it. Chuck moved in next to Kara and helped fend off the ones coming her way. I’ll stick with the ones on the stairs.”

  I moved in beside Brandon and started firing immediately. He had whittled the group down, but many of his shots went into the zombie’s torsos because he was firing in uncontrolled bursts.

  Chuck moved behind me and started firing. Like Kara, he made each shot count. He wasn’t showy about it either. Shoot, target, shoot. They were evenly matched. He might have the advantage because of his modern weapon because Kara insisted on her old-style rifle. Still, she made the best of it. Better than I was, in fact.

  “How’s it going, Joel?” Greg asked over the din of gunfire.

  “Just a couple more,” I shouted.

  “What about you, Kara?”

  “We’ve thinned the closest ones, but the group on the way up is going to fill-in for the ones we’ve taken out.”

  “Okay,” Greg yelled, “Joel, as soon as you get that way clear, shout out. Kara, make sure you grab the Geiger counters. I’m going to toss a grenade on the stairs.”

  Grenade. Things were getting serious.

  I took out three more, and Brandon dropped two, leaving two more clamoring over the bodies of their fallen colleagues. One was an older lady in a badly stained dress, and the other was a burly guy missing an ear and the ends of his fingers on one hand. Brandon targeted the burly man and pulled the trigger, only to hear an empty click.

  “Shit,” he said. “Oh well.” Then he charged the burly guy.

  “No,” I shouted. “I can take them out.” But he didn’t listen, rushing forward and pulling back his rifle ready to club the closest one. Not expecting all all-out fight, we had left all our hand-to-hand weapons in the SUV.

  I aimed at the female zombie and took it out with a shot to the forehead, its brains, and blood splattering the wall as it slumped to the floor.

  Brandon slammed the butt of his rifle squarely into the face of the burly zombie. I could hear the bone-crunching impact even over the gunshots. The zombie’s face went from gray to bright red as blood blossomed from what was left of its nose. It stumbled back and slid down the wall a good five feet but recovered and came at Brandon with a snarl.

  I tried to draw a bead on it, but Brandon kept moving into my line of fire.

  “We need to go,” I heard Greg shout behind me, “get ready.”

  Brandon whacked the zombie on the collarbone and snapped it like a twig. The thing once again stumbled back but rallied for another go at Brandon. Brandon’s luck ran out as he reared back and stepped into a puddle of blood on the floor. His feet went out from under him, pitching him onto his back. I aimed for the zombie, but heard a quick crack of a shot, and the burly zombie’s face disappeared completely, and he fell like dead weight to the floor beside Brandon. I looked back and saw Kara standing in the perfect shooting stance while Chuck fired away at the other group, clogging up the hallway in that direction.

  “Time to move, Chuck,” Greg shouted, and Chuck back stepped past the stairwell while firing all the while. His movement took a toll on his aim, but he still got headshots on three out of five shots.

  “Fire in the hole,” Greg shouted as he tossed the grenade down the stairs and then pushed Kara along. While the gunshots were almost deafening, the grenade was deafening when it went off, sending a forceful concussion up the stairs. My ears rang for about five seconds; then, all of the sound around me went mushy and flat as if I heard the world through water.

  I ran forward and clutched Brandon’s hand to help him up, but he pulled his hand back.

  “I don’t need your help,” he said as he rolled over and pushed himself to his feet.

  “Let’s run, folks,” Greg said as he came up behind us.

  Chuck fired off a couple more shots, and then we were running down a long corridor away from the pursuing group. As we ran, my hearing gradually came back to somewhere near normal, and I could hear the moans of the zombies chasing us reverberating off the walls of the corridor. Greg and Chuck had the lead. Kara and I had their back, but our effort was really perfunctory as we were more about the retreat.

  We quickly got to the end of the hallway where it turned into another intersecting corridor. The corridor to the left led back into darkness, and the one to the right was longer but showed some daylight. Greg chose daylight, and we were off, our footfalls echoing off the walls.

  We made it about halfway to the daylight when several bodies eclipsed the daylight, and I thought, “Oh shit, more zombies.”

  I saw Greg raise his gun to fire, but then one of the zombies spoke.

  “This way,” it yelled.

  It was Zach. Hoo-fucking-ray, we were getting out of there alive.

  When the people at the church heard the gunfire, they pulled together a team to see if they could help us get out. It consisted of Zach, Jerry, and a guy I didn’t know. On the way in, they had taken out a half dozen zombies but warned us that more were collecting in the streets, drawn in by the gunfire.

  “Where’d all these zombies come from?” Zach asked as we stepped out of the building and into the daylight.

  “We stumbled upon a nest,” Greg said, “and the zombies woke up, and they started after us. I think there must have been more than one nest though because we had groups coming at us from several directions.”

  Zach shook his head. “We haven’t been in the school in a couple of months. Obviously, we need to secure the building at some point. Having that many zombies in this close proximity will cause us trouble in the long run.”

  A gunshot ended the discussion. A zombie fell in the street, and I saw Chuck about to take out another one. There were less than a dozen, but they were spaced out, coming onto the scene from different directions. Chuck pulled the trigger again, and an elderly male zombie decked out in a tattered suit fell forward, the back of its head blown out.

  Brandon pulled his pistol and started blasting away at the zombies wandering onto the scene.

  “Brandon, Chuck, let’s just get back to the church with limited gunfire,” Greg said. “The more we shoot, the more that come to see what the ruckus is all about.

  Brandon shot two more, winging one, but taking the other one out.

  “Brandon, cut it out,” Greg said. “Every shot you take brings another one to the area, and that means the more the people here will have to deal with.”

  Brandon continued aiming at one large zombie missing half of its arm, but after a couple of seconds, he lowered his gun and started backing toward the church.

  We were back in the church in a matter of a minute. Chuck only had to shoot one zombie who was between the doors and us.

  When we entered the church, a few people were less than happy to see us. They knew that loud sounds drew the undead, and they would be left holding the bag when we departed. Greg did his best to apologize to the ones who were upset, but Roger interceded after he got the explanation of what happened in the school.

  “Listen, people,” he said, “we don’t like what a shootout means, but it is a good thing in the end. We had no idea that many zombies were this close to us. Now we do, and it’s something that could have been a problem for us. So, look on the bright side.”

  Brandon laughed out loud.

  “What’s so funny?” A middle-aged woman with a sour face asked in disgust. “When you’re gone, we’ll be left cleaning up the mess you made.”

  Greg gave Brandon a glare, and Brandon stifled some of what he found amusing.

  It took a while lo
nger for the dissenters to be mollified. It was that,or they resigned themselves to something they no longer had any control over. And wasn’t that the way of the zombie apocalypse? Resignation to the fact that you no longer had control over much of anything.

  Roger detailed several of his men to watch over the area to make sure a horde didn’t show up. Greg offered to stay, but Roger waved him off. They could take care of the situation.

  We took thirty minutes to say our goodbyes, and, in some ways, it felt as if we were abandoning them this time instead of just leaving. Things were not too good at the church. If only they could be convinced that they should come with us, but it was not to be. After several impassioned pleas from Greg and Kara, the people at the church declined our invitation for the thousandth time. They felt God had directed them to stay put, and as a result, they couldn’t be talked out of staying.

  As we gathered to leave, Roger handed over the books on radiation we had asked about.

  Books. Now that there was no Internet or World Wide Web, we were forced back to the old ways. How would we survive?

  This time we exited out the back to avoid the few zombies wandering around in the street between the church and the school. Our parting was like our arrival earlier that day with some of those who greeted us sending us off.

  I gladly accepted another hug from Claudia. Zach and Roger gave each of us manly handshakes and wished us well. Kara teared up when Paige hugged her. Roger comforted Kara by patting her on the back for a moment. Greg shook Roger’s hand, and they shared a knowing look. There were no words. Our groups would be apart again, and the pain of separation was all too real.

  Roger said a brief prayer over our group, asking for traveling mercies, and we loaded up. Leaving was inevitable, and we knew it. While it seemed to draw out the pain of departing, there was something between us that we never wanted to end. With good friends, it’s always that way, isn’t it?

  About a block away, I looked over my shoulder and saw Roger, his arm around Claudia, waving at us. Some dark intuition made me wonder if we would ever see them again.

  Chapter 15

  Return Trip

  The gunshots came across the speakers as muted popping sounds. Anthony had placed a sophisticated array of parabolic microphones on top of his building to pick up any sounds out of the ordinary. While they had been common at the onset of the Outbreak, gunshots were few and far between now. Anytime he heard them; he stopped to investigate because it paid to be vigilant.

  He left his workshop and hustled outside, rifle and binoculars in hand. The gunshots were persistent, yet muted. He couldn’t pinpoint the source, but it was coming from the downtown area.

  He went back inside, got the keys to his Prius, and started driving towards the gunfire, keeping the window down so that he could monitor the sounds. Staying off the main road, he stopped every couple of blocks and listened carefully, not wanting to be discovered if somebody was in retreat from the firefight.

  He backtracked and drove up the railroad overpass, stopping at the apex and using his binoculars to scan the downtown. The town was as dead as it had been, but the shots continued. Getting annoyed that he couldn’t find the location of the gunshots, he jumped back in his car and sped back towards the downtown. It took him two more blocks to tamp down his frustration and return to a calm equilibrium. He reminded himself that giving into extreme emotions would get him killed. Steady restraint is what kept him alive.

  He slowed and selected an abandoned four-story warehouse as his next vantage point. He had used the building before to spy on the church people.

  After hustling from the car and climbing the four flights of stairs, he was nearly winded. He took up a position at the southwest corner of the building, avoiding any of the weak spots on the roof left there from years of neglect.

  He focused the binoculars, scanning the area around the church, and he waited. After a few minutes, a small team of men with guns ran out of the church towards the high school and out of view. The shooting had stopped by then. Zombies wandering the town filtered in the direction of the school, drawn in by the sounds of the gunfire. Several dozen were coming in from different directions, shambling along in the melted and slushy snow, oblivious to the cold.

  He watched as a lone zombie walked northward towards the school. As it reached the center of the intersection in front of the school, a gunshot rang out, and the back of the zombie’s head exploded in a corona of blood and gore as it tumbled to the street. Four seconds later, another zombie fell, its head a bloody mess.

  Just a few moments after that, a contingent of the church people jogged across the intersection in front of the church and went inside. He stayed in position and continued to monitor the church; the wind whipped around his face, chapping his skin as the cold seeped into his body. He did his best to ignore it. If the damned zombies could survive being out in the cold, certainly he could. At least, for a while.

  About a half hour later, an SUV pulled around into sight from behind the church. It quickly drove out of view. He considered going in pursuit but knew that was folly. And it would be risky with the local zombie population in an uproar.

  Anthony’s thoughts went back to the SUV. It was not one he recognized from the church people’s current fleet of vehicles, but it seemed vaguely familiar. It took him several seconds to recall where he had seen it. It had been a part of the fleet, but it had been gone for several months.

  The others had returned. But for what? Were they back or just for a stop-in?

  This unanswered questions teased him for a few moments, but he let it go. It didn’t matter. If his plan were going to work, he’d have to up his troop strength and maybe even find some confederates. He hated the idea of having to rely on others, but being a one-man band was not a prudent course.

  But where was he going to find these recruits? He mulled this over for a minute or two but tabled the thought and moved on to the task at hand, knowing he’d just have to wait until the opportunity arose.

  He monitored the church for another half hour and saw no activity of note beside zombies filtering around in the street. It was time to get back to work.

  Coming down the road towards us was an impressive mass of zombies, and they didn’t look happy. But did they ever look happy? They certainly weren’t the welcome wagon.

  “Oh shit,” Brandon said, as he leaned in-between the front seats. He beat me saying it by about two seconds. No gold medal in swearing for me, I guess.

  I wouldn’t define it as a horde. Maybe a mini-horde. Or a throng. Whatever I wanted to call it, there was a hell of a lot of zombies on the street ahead of us. Greg did his best to avoid the largest groups, but once we got on the main road out of town, we found a mass of them teeming towards the downtown. They were in search of the source of the noise from earlier, namely our skirmish with the zombies.

  If a person were heading north out of Portsmouth, he would find that there really was only one practical way out and that was Route 23. The hills bordered it on the east, and the Scioto River valley lay to its west.

  “Well, we have three choices,” Greg said. “We can fight our way through them, find a different way home, or go back to the church.”

  “But if we go back to the church, won’t we draw all these zombies with us?” Kara asked.

  “Backtracking and going west or east routes will take hours,” Brandon said.

  “And we have no way of knowing that those ways aren’t blocked, too,” Greg said. “If we do get out of the way, there’s a chance that all these groups will gather into a horde and continue to the church. The church people don’t need that.”

  “Why don’t we try a feint?” I said. “Draw them back in a different direction and then try to get around them.”

  The sound of the car engine is what woke Russell from his doze. He slept a lot those days. Healing from his wounds as a result of the assault on the house made by the Lord of the Dead was a slow process. That’s what he called that man in the bus �
� the Lord of the Dead. It seemed fitting because he did have some sort of dominion over the undead.

  Russell’s arm and shoulder ached nearly constantly. He had scrounged pain killers from houses in town. The pain killers not only kept the pain away, but they kept the nightmares at bay. It was at the edges of sleep when he relived the onslaught of the zombies as they entered the house. As they killed his brother and his friends. It was on the outer rim of sleep where he still heard the echo of the Lord of the Dead’s laugh reverberating across time.

  He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and went to the window. Cautiously, he peeked out and saw the SUV that had driven into town earlier, idling in the middle of the street down at the bottom of the hill. He also saw the wandering mass of zombies as they shuffled toward the SUV. He realized quickly that the people in the SUV were trapped in no man’s land.

  He had seen more than one car try to drive through a mass of the undead only to founder on the bodies. Once that happened, it was all over for the occupants of the car. They’d get out and try to run for safety, only to be taken by the zombies. Or they’d decide to wait the zombies out, hoping they would go away. That never worked, either. The zombies had endless patience.

  Just a month ago, Russell watched a family in a car surrounded for three days by the zombies. In a desperation move, the father got out and tried to pull the zombies away, but he was taken down and devoured in a matter of seconds. He must have left his wife with a gun because later that night, Russell saw the flash of two gunshots quickly followed by a third as the woman killed her kids and then took her own life.

  The memory of it still haunted him, but he was only one man and with only one fully functional arm. What could he have done?

  If he had taken a couple of shots into the scrum around the car, he might have been able to peel off a few, but that would have left him compromised and exposed. They would have died anyway, and he would have been open to discovery. Wouldn’t he?

  His attention came back to the present when he heard a gunshot. One of the people was outside the SUV, firing at the oncoming group of zombies. Russell zeroed in with his binoculars and saw that it was a young guy, no older than Cody had been. He looked familiar, but Russell couldn’t remember from where, but he had to be a townie. It’s not like Russell had been around the world or anything.