Forget the Alamo: A Zombie Novella Page 7

  In the only truly beneficial gesture the bombs could give us, at least at that moment, its shockwave grabbed both us, giving us the final momentum needed to by-pass the bank and make it to the water. A white out of blinding heat wrapped around us, propelling us an extra fifteen feet into the lake. As we descended, I could see only the abstract shadowy outlines of people in the water as I toppled through the air. Then I hit the water.

  Our hands separated on impact and we were individuals again, on our own to survive.

  After the sprint, the only things my lungs desperately wanted was oxygen, but a voice told me to stay submerged. Opening my eyes in the murky water, I looked upward and saw the brilliance of a firestorm pass over the water in all its terrible beauty. The dragon’s breath lingered above the surface for a few seconds and then as terribly as it had come, it dissipated.

  Not waiting to make sure its withdrawal was total and unconditional, I surged out of the water a second later gasping for air. While I had hoped for a few refreshing gulps of clean air, instead I choked down overheated oxygen, redolent with the stench of burnt soil and vegetation.

  The world outside the water was alive with fire as bushes and trees along the bank blazed like torches against the sky. It still hurt my eyes to look into the intensity of the inferno so I directed my attention to the water and saw heads start to pop out like timid birds.

  About fifteen feet away, Joni broke the surface and, like me, sucked down some much needed oxygen. After five deep breaths, she started calling out, “Jessica! Martin! Jessica!”

  “They’re over here,” a voice called from about twenty feet away. I think it was Gentry, but sounds were thick, long, and indistinct, a side effect from the intensity of the explosions.

  “Mom! Mom, we’re over here,” Martin cried out and Joni immediately swam over to him.

  Not being a strong swimmer, I dog paddled to the shore passing by some of the others. Getting onto the bank was a major chore. Climbing the bank was like summiting Everest. My legs, arms, and entire body protested, but I dug deeper and half-climbed, half crawled onto the bank.

  The temperature started to cool down around us, but so much smoke and dust still filled the air that it would make L.A. on a bad day seem pristine in comparison. While the brightness was no longer at supernova intensity, the fire from the city still threatened the dark of the night sky.

  There was a splashing noise coming up behind me and I turned to see Randell flailing about in the water. If anyone had worse form than me when it came to swimming, it had to him.

  I stumbled down the bank and helped him get back on dry land.

  “Thanks,” he said, taking in gasping breaths.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  “How’d you know the water would protect us?” He asked.

  “I didn’t.” I let that hang for a moment as I took in more breaths. “I only knew we didn’t have any choice. We could burn, boil, or make it. It looks like we made it. At least, this far.”

  More sounds of splashing came from behind us as the rest of the group came towards the shore. I started up the bank, afraid of what I would see.

  When I crested the top, the landscape was one of fire and more fire. My first impression was that everything was burning. When I let my eyes and mind adjust, I could see that the worst of the blazes were a half mile into the direction of the downtown. Anything in that area was consumed in fire, the roar of it like a savage beast.

  “Holy shit,” someone said just behind me. Mack stepped up beside me with Rosalita in tow.

  “Dios mio,” Rosalita said.

  “Ditto,” was all I could say.

  Trees, bushes, and any wooden structures in our area all were on fire to some degree. It was almost surreal.

  Once, as a kid, I witnessed the aftermath of a gas well explosion. Flames from the well gushed 250 feet into the air in a column at least 100 feet in diameter. The roar was so loud, even at a half mile away, you had to shout to be heard. Waves of heat emanated from the fire in such intensity that your clothes were warm to the touch. For me, this was the same experience only amplified by a scale of ten. Maybe twenty. Fortunately, we were far enough away from the epicenter of inferno, but there were still many fires nearby.

  I counted our group lucky. My best guess was that we were on the outer periphery of the blast radius of the closest bomb. Had it landed on top of us, no amount of water would have saved us. We would have been boiled alive.

  Joni and her two kids made it to the top along with Sammy, Gentry, and Mack. The others quickly followed, each person stood slack jawed as they looked into the inferno. No one said a word for a full minute as they took in the fiery panorama.

  I caught some movement far off in the distance between a group of two story brick buildings. Something was moving out of the flames. Something human. Or was once human. A zombie stumbled along in halting steps like a walking torch. It made it about twenty feet before it fell to its knees, crawled for ten feet more, and then fell face down. It didn’t move again.

  “Dios mio.” I didn’t even have to look over to see Rosalita to know she was genuflecting.

  A steady, overheated wind blew into our faces, and I knew we were far from out of trouble. Fires of this nature, with the right environment, could spread quickly.

  “People,” I said, “We’ve got to get on the move again.”

  A few of them groaned.

  “Can’t we take a rest?” Randell asked. “We’ve been through so much.”

  “No,” I said. “If the wind picks up, and I’m sure it will from the heat of the fires, that wall of fire is only a half mile away and could come at us. Faster than we can run. You can rest if you want, but I’m going to see if we can use the bus to get us the hell out of here.”

  My quick exit seemed like a good plan at the time but I failed to account for natural consequences of large scale fires. Like any forest fire, the woodland creatures are usually running ahead of the flames to escape. In our post-apocalyptic world, our woodland creatures turned out to be the undead. Some were blackened from head to foot, stumbling around aimlessly on charred stumps, unable to see because their eyes had been burnt out or boiled away. Others still smoldered while a few had active fires on their bodies.

  Despite being burnt and having the primal fear of fire motivating their escape, the ones with working eyes took notice and veered off their escape, making a path toward us. Some crawled, some stumbled, and some walked freely despite their burns.

  I had left my shotgun on the bus so my only recourse at the moment was to kick these barbecued sons of bitches. It was a prospect that I didn’t relish. I figured I could make all-out sprint for the bus, but that would leave Rosalita and the kids in our party left to fend for themselves.

  Sammy pulled in beside me and asked, “Grant, what are we going to do?”

  Desperate times mean desperate measures. Scanning the ground, I looked for anything that wasn’t on fire that I could use as a weapon, but the best I could come up with was a partially flaming tree limb. I took off my shirt and wrapped it around the end of the stick, gripping it tightly in both my hands. “Find something laying around,” I said.

  By the time I had the burning limb ready, a zombie with a blackened face and charred stumps for hands was just about on us. Feeling like some half-assed medieval knight, I stepped up and swung the limb like a broadsword, bringing it down on the undead thing’s head. It connected with a hollow thud and the thing went down, but immediately tried to get back up. I popped it again, feeling something crack inside its skull, and the thing went down for good.

  But like the hydra, two took its place. One was a badly burnt woman of an undetermined race. There wasn’t an inch of unburnt flesh exposed. Her skin was either black or filled with puffy blisters and there were only crinkled wisps of burnt hair sticking out of her charred scalp. I could tell she was having trouble seeing but the other one seemed no worse for the wear despite tendrils of smoke coming off its back. This guy was a
big one, weighing in at 300 pounds and as a wide as truck.

  The burning limb didn’t inspire me with confidence, but given that I had no other weapon, it would have to do. The badly burnt female zombie lunged at me, but I swung my flaming limb and it backed off a few feet. Despite its fear of fire, it continued to advance on me, but maintained a respectful distance. We moved around each other in a macabre dance as it circled around me staying out of reach of the flames. I closed on it, using a jabbing motion, pushing my limb into its face. The zombie batted at my limb, but I made two quick contacts into its eyes and the thing backed off. Dazed, it started wandering away from me, arms flailing wildly, obviously blinded.

  Two down, one to go. The one to go was the smoldering zombie and he got the drop on me, ramming into me, and knocking me to one knee. If its fingers hadn’t been fused together by the fire, I’m sure he would have grappled me to the ground. I stumbled back a few feet and it faced off with me, snarling. It started to charge when I heard someone screaming coming up fast from behind me.

  Before I could even to see what it was, Sammy rushed past me, roaring in frustration and anger, hands over his head holding a cinder block. As he closed on the zombie, he brought the cinder block down directly into the thing’s face. There was an ugly crunching noise and the zombie’s face was no more as it pitched backwards.

  Sammy leaned forward and retrieved the block from what was left of the thing’s head.

  “Nice way to improvise,” I said.

  “Thanks,” he said. “It was all I could find.”

  Mack stepped up beside the two of us, holding a road sign with a large ball of concrete on the end. “I pulled this out of the ground,” he said, smiling with a sense of menace.

  The rest of the group stacked up behind us. Across the field, I could see a line of silhouettes starting towards us. And it wasn’t the welcome wagon.

  “Mack and I will take the lead,” I said. “Sammy go to the back of the group to cover our flank. Everyone else find something you can fight with. It’s only two hundred feet or so, but it looks like they’re not going to make it easy.”

  “I’ve still got my gun,” Gentry said, holding it up.

  “Well, why didn’t you say something?” I asked.

  “I’m out of bullets.”

  “I...I...” I started, but knew there was no time to say all the things I wanted to say, so I let it drop. “Get something that you can use and stick with Sammy to guard our back.”

  It was still a long slog. The zombies were hard to spot as they came out of the smoke, appearing like apparitions. The only thing we had going for us is that we were as hard to see as they were.

  Mack wielded his signpost with deadly efficiency, sometimes bashing, sometimes swinging. Each time the ragged ball of concrete connected, a resounding crunch could be heard as it cracked bones into tiny pieces. Sammy sometimes threw and sometimes bashed with his cinder block. Me and my flaming limb made a decent fighting combination.

  We were just about to the edge of the dirt driveway around the storage building when someone screamed at the back of the group and the whole mass of people surged into our backs nearly knocking us over. With people in panic mode, I took a quick glance around the building. No zombies were in sight. I said to Joni, “Get them on the bus. Mack, stay with me.”

  I turned my body sideways as the people swarmed around me in a panicked run. When the crowd passed, I saw two people rolling on the ground and a third person bouncing around them. I bounded toward them and quickly saw Gentry was one of the people on the ground with a large female zombie on top of him. Large chunks of her hair had been burned away and her clothes were blackened in places, but she was intact in most other ways. She was doing everything in her undead power to get a chunk of him.

  Sammy danced beside them trying to get an angle with his cinder block. Every time he started to bring it down, the two of them would exchange positions. Why Sammy didn’t just reach down and try to rip the zombie off of Gentry was beyond me, but I don’t think any of us were at our top mental game after a night of horrors.

  I was just about to them, my limb raised and poised for impact, when Gentry screamed out in pain.

  Two words flashed through my mind, “So close.”

  Sammy froze in place, but I didn’t want the zombie to have any more of Gentry. Dropping my limb, I grabbed the zombie by the back of her dress and ripped her off him. She snarled as she rolled away snapping Sammy out of his trance. He rushed past me and slammed the cinder block into the zombie’s face. The zombie started to rise, but Sammy brought the block down again. Over and over again, he slammed the block down onto the thing, screaming an unintelligible string of words in Spanish.

  Gentry sat up and groaned, holding his ruined hand while watching the blood flow over the open stumps of his fingers. The zombie had bitten off two fingers at the first digits.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Gentry said.

  Rosalita moved past me and put a hand on Sammy’s back, bringing him out of his killing frenzy. He slowly turned, his face reminding me of a child who had just received the most horrible news. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he fell into her arms. She hugged him and patted his back tenderly as he began to sob.

  “I guess this means I’m off the bus,” Gentry said, trying to hold himself together.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be,” he said. “We wouldn’t be this far if it wasn’t for you.”

  Through the smoke wafting across the field I spotted more of the undead coming our way. The dead never rest.

  “We’ve got incoming,” I said. Gentry, Rosalita, and Sammy all looked to the oncoming zombies. “Rosalita, can you get Sammy on the bus?”

  She grabbed at Sammy’s hand and tugged him along, leading him toward the bus, leaving Gentry and I alone.

  “How do you want to handle this?” I asked. “The shotgun’s on the bus.”

  “Shit,” he said, his gaze a thousand miles away. “I don’t want to become one of those things, but having you shoot me...Shit.”

  He was silent for a few moments, then said, “Get it, Grant. Hurry up before I change my mind.”

  I jogged toward the bus. As I approached the building, I could see that it had weathered the blast, but didn’t look all that sturdy anymore. The entryway Joni had driven the bus into faced away from the blast but the flames had still made their way to the bus. The rear was blackened with large blisters of paint dangling off the sides. I only hoped that the tires were intact.

  I elbowed my way past the people trying to get into bus and climbed in. Joni sat at the wheel.

  “Is it drivable? I asked.

  “Yeah, I don’t see why not,” she said.

  “What about the tires? Are they in good enough condition?”

  Her eyes narrowed and she bit her lip, “They’re a little soft but they’ll make it. Getting out of this building’s going to be a bitch, though. We’re really wedged in against the roof.”

  “Remember, we don’t have to return the thing for a refund or anything.”

  “There’s that.”

  “Joni, can you hand me the shotgun?”

  “What do you need it for?”

  “Gentry got bit.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You taking care of him?” She asked, handing me the shotgun.

  “Yeah.” It sucks to be me.

  She started to turn away, but put out a hand and squeezed my arm. “Poor Grant. You’ve had to do a lot of bad shit tonight. Can’t someone else do it?”

  “Like who?”

  She didn’t say anything as she searched my face with her eyes. People jostled by me and I stood there looking for any reason not to go do what I had to do, but none came. I squeezed between the last few people, got off the bus, and walked back toward the field my feet as heavy as lead.

  Gentry was standing at the edge of the hard packed driveway, looking across the field, watching the zombies shamble through
the smoke. Fortunately, none were heading our way. At least, not yet. He cradled his wounded hand against body, blood oozing onto his shirt and pants.

  He must have heard me approach. “You think they’re going to drop more bombs?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think so” I said. “At least, not now. They’ll send in some reconnaissance to see how effective the bombs were. If there’s still a lot of the zombies, they’ll drop some more.”

  “Yeah, probably. There’s always more bombs.”

  We stood in silence for a several seconds.

  “The wind’s shifting,” he said. “The fires from the city is going to be coming this way soon.”

  I moved my gaze to the inferno that used to be downtown San Antonio. The flames twisted and turned raising up as if they wanted to devour the sky and everything in it. Its fierce intensity was hard to look into for too long.

  “Let’s get this done so you can get the hell out of here,” he said and walked past me towards the side of the building and out of view of anyone on the bus.

  The distant, but intense flames sent long and constantly changing shadows along the partially blackened side of the building, it corrugated metal adding more dimensions to the shapes. The knee high grass along the side of the building smoldered, the tops glowing like cigarettes in the night.

  “You still have rounds in that thing, right?” Gentry asked.

  I nodded, reliving my last few moments with Jenkins again, hoping for some release from what I was about to do, but knowing that Gentry had no illusions.

  “Listen, just so you don’t have to feel bad about this,” he said. “I’d do it myself, but I’m pretty sure I can’t handle the gun.” He held up his mangled hand and then pulled it back into his body. “Too bad I didn’t keep one bullet back for my gun, sort of like Barney Fife on the Andy Griffith Show. You remember him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He always had that one bullet. Andy let him keep it.”

  The engine of the bus roared to life inside the building.

  “I’m just stalling, I guess,” he said. The tears were starting to come but they were silent ones, leaving streaks through the dirt and soot on his cheeks.