What Zombies Fear (Book 2): The Maxists Read online

  Not to be outdone, Leo poured on a burst of speed from clear across the grounds. She chased down the flying knife, reached up and plucked it from the air while she was running, then speared the old lady through the middle of her forehead on the end of a short sword. She lifted the handle of the curved blade, splitting the old lady’s face as the corpse slid to the ground, forever unmoving.

  “Not fair!” yelled John. He threw the last seven knives in one quick movement, including the cardboard box. Each knife flew straight and accurate, out of the box. Each blade buried itself in the forehead of its target.

  “Jesus, John, how hard do you have to throw those knives to get them to stick in their foreheads?” I shouted, almost laughing. In unison the corpses fell to their knees and then toppled forward all at the same time. Three of them came to rest face down with their heads inside the empty cardboard box.

  “Catch those, Leo!” he laughed.

  While John and Leo were playing with the first group, Marshall smashed through all the undead in front of us and was wading through a sea of bodies towards the gap in the fence. He bent down and retrieved the hammer he’d thrown in his empty left hand and then brought the two hammer heads together. I’m sure the sound of two giant heat treated high carbon steel hammer heads clanging together with that much force would had been deafening, except that there was a head between them to absorb the blow. The skull exploded in a circle outward from the head in all directions, launching gore twenty five feet in the air. Marshall had an almost perfect line of gray matter and blood from his crotch to his forehead.

  About halfway to the broken segment of fence he stopped at a pallet of propane tanks, the kind for regular gas grills. He picked one off the stack with one hand and hurled it like a football into the crowd of zombies. The 25 pound tank pushed a crowd of undead backwards towards the hole in the fence.

  Feeling fairly useless, I walked around towards the front of the building, stepping over parts, the carnage was really amazing.

  My radio crackled in my ear “Tookes, this is Bookbinder; we’re coming up that way. I can see your location from the top of the police headquarters; there is a group of 200 or more heading your way. What are you guys doing? This horde was heading towards us, we had to do a little shooting. They stopped mid-step, turned around and started walking towards you. “

  “I don’t know, I said, we’re being fairly quiet. We’ve got about 150 here we were killing hand to hand.”

  His reply was short, “You took on 150 hand to hand?”

  Chapter 3

  Rescue

  “Yea, we’re blowing off a little steam. We’ve about got this cleaned up but I’ll let them know that the locals seem to know we’re here.”

  “Hey!” I yelled with my newly acquired subspace voice. I don’t really know what to call that voice, when I yell loud enough that people hear it in their heads, not just with their ears. I was always a fan of Star Trek, so subspace seems to be the closest thing I can think of. It came out loud enough for everyone within two miles to hear. I needed to work on controlling that, or finding out if that was possible.

  “There are 200 more coming and maybe more behind that. I suggest we go to weapons and end this.” When I spoke, every zombie in the place turned to look at me for a moment. They lowered their hands to their sides and stared directly at me. In unison their heads tilted slightly to the side, before they started walking towards me. I guess they could hear me too.

  Gunfire broke out from all over the propane depot yard. I heard Marshall’s shotgun and John’s pistols decimating walkers. I fired my own Sig through three magazines and loaded the fourth before there was a break in the action.

  The four of us came back together outside the depot office.

  “I probably should have covered this before, but does anyone know how to fill one of these trucks with propane?” I asked.

  “I would bet there is a fill tube and a valve somewhere.” offered John somewhat less than helpfully.

  “Good, that makes you the expert. Figure it out,” I replied unable to keep from grinning.

  “Marshall, Leo, find trucks with keys. I want two full gas tankers at the house.”

  Marshall and Leo left to find trucks that worked with the keys they had, while John sauntered over to the huge propane tanks. John was one of those guys that could look at anything and figure out how it works. Marshall and Leo opened the door to one of the trucks, a zombie fell out. His entire body was swollen up like a balloon, it must have reached 150 degrees in the cab of that truck several times over this summer and it hadn’t been good for this corpse. He literally popped when he hit the ground, his skin splitting all the way up his back. Only his shirt kept its liquefied innards from escaping. Marshall smashed his now deflated head with a hammer and stepped up on the gas tank step to get in the truck. Instead of sliding into the driver’s seat, he immediately got out, retched and vomited up his entire lunch all over the already rotten corpse.

  “Oh god,” I overhead him say, “I’m not sure I can stay in that truck. Let’s go open the other door, find your truck and see if it airs out some.”

  They walked over to the other truck, which thankfully didn’t have a rotten ghoul in it. Leo climbed up into the cab, while Marshall walked to the back of the truck. ”Push in the clutch and put it in first gear Leo!” He yelled up to the cab. Then with what looked like very little effort, Marshall shoved the truck towards the filling area. “Let out the clutch!”

  She popped the clutch and the truck sputtered. The engine turned over twice before it roared to life and took off. She drove it a lap around the yard and left it idling by the fill station. She moved at what had to be her top speed to the second truck, it was nearly instant. The only way to know she’d moved was the trail of dust rising up into the sky, as far as my eyes could tell, she disappeared at one truck and reappeared at the other.

  Either the second truck had aired out some, or Leo was a little tougher than Marshall, because she hopped up in the truck as Marshall pushed that one up the hill. With one shove, the truck went zero to twenty-five miles per hour uphill. Marshall didn’t even grunt.

  Just as that truck started, I heard the crash of chain link behind me. When I ran around the other side of the building, I skidded to a halt. Easily three hundred more zombies had pushed over the fence and were now coming our way.

  “Guys! At least four hundred more, front gates!” I sent to everyone, while running back around the building. I had one more full magazine for my pistol. I had several for the rifle. I raised Sammie to my shoulder and started mowing down zombies as fast as I could cycle the bolt. Which I’m sure was a tenth as fast as John could, but he had his own guns. Twelve shots netted me eleven dead zombies. Replace the magazine, twelve more shots and ten dead zombies. By then, they had closed to within twenty yards, so I switched to the pistol. I fired of its twelve shots. At thirty feet I was faster and as accurate with the pistol. When they were ten feet away I holstered my now empty sidearm and drew the hatchet attached to my pack. Marshall was twirling both hammers. John had both of his guns holstered and was reloading magazines, his hands a blur as he pulled bullets out of every pocket and pouch.

  Leo was standing in line with us, her short swords drawn. We looked like a line of heroes about to fight their last stand when suddenly the first row of undead collapsed in a hail of bullets. I looked to the left; there was Bookbinder and his team, laying down cross fire. He’d come at this horde from the flank, his men were decimating them. We were all out of ammo except John and I think he was getting low. John typically carried a thousand rounds on him, one of the reasons he preferred the smaller and lighter .22 and .9mm calibers. They were so much lighter than 30.06 or .45 calibers, the magazines were half the size and John was just as deadly with the smaller bullets.

  When this latest wave was dead, Bookbinder, Reineer, Hostetler, Garrett, Johnson came walking up.

  “There are at least a thousand more that all turned their heads this way right befo
re we heard that first engine start up. We need to get out of here, quickly.”

  “I’ve got the filling figured out I think Tookes. But we need power.” said John.

  “Alright, let’s get out with what’s in the trucks. Marshall, do you have any idea if there was anything in them?” I asked.

  “The retched smelling one was way heavier than the first one. I think the first one might be close to empty, but I think the last one was pretty full.”

  “Ok, let’s go with that, we need to grab a truck to load the generators, heaters and more propane. Leave one generator in the warehouse to power the fill equipment and we’ll be quieter.” I said.

  We loaded up in the trucks, I noticed Marshall was somehow faster than Leo to the ‘non stinky’ truck. I hopped into the passenger seat of the rancid truck with Leo, but I only had to ride with her to the Jeep.

  Less than three minutes later, John pulled out with a pickup truck loaded with five propane generators, six vent-free heaters and three propane powered stand lamps, like old-time gas burning street lamps.

  When Leo and I got to the Jeep, Bookbinder’s team hopped off the back of the tanker trucks and got into a pair of police cars and the swat van.

  “Holy crap Charlie, you got the swat van!”

  “Sir. That was my mission, sir. We had to engage very light hostiles, the police barracks was empty, save three infected in the holding cells in the drunk-tank. We ended those three and had the run of the place. This big heap,” he said as he pounded the sides of the swat van, “Was the only thing that would carry the radio repeater, so we had to take it.”

  I grinned at Charlie “Nice work M1.”

  Charlie beamed a smile back at me and his men looked proud.

  “What about m3? How are they doing at the CVS?” I asked.

  “Scott reported that they had no problems. They were supposed to radio if they had any contact, they checked in about twenty minutes ago that the only infected they saw turned around and started stumbling this way.” replied Charlie. “His second, Jacobsen will have a full list of supplies when they report back, but Scott said the CVS had not been scavenged before.”

  “And m5? Did they have any trouble at the clinic?”

  “No, Johnson reported three contacts with infected. They killed those three with hand to hand weapons when they breached the building. The few they saw wandering towards the clinic turned around and left before they got within melee range. They were also successful in loading up diagnostic equipment and prescription drugs,” said Charlie. “They found over seven hundred Percocet tablets in the doctor’s desk.”

  I laughed out loud, “That’s too funny. Doc had a monkey on his back.”

  Chapter 4

  Sniper

  We loaded up in the trucks, Bookbinder and his crew in the swat van, Marshall in the disgusting rotting flesh propane truck, Leo in the other. John drove the pickup truck full of equipment and I led the way in the yellow Jeep and headed for home.

  We drove slowly through town; I wanted to get a feel for how things were in Culpeper. There were occasional pockets of undead and as we passed, they would look up and start shambling our way. We watched behind us, for the most part they stopped coming after us when we were half a mile or so ahead of them. That was good to know, I was slightly worried they’d follow us all the way to our house.

  On two occasions, the undead were blocking the road. Both groups were around a dozen in a tight pack, walking down the middle of the road. It was interesting to watch them; they seemed to mostly stick to the roads or sidewalks. It was very seldom that they went through yards or grass, unless they were directly chasing something to eat. Maybe the pavement was easier walking, I don’t know. We were trying to save ammunition and since we had both teams together, we were killing them with hand to hand weapons. I was pretty confident in my “charge, sidestep, hatchet to the head” technique.

  The stupid zombies never did anything differently. They had one attack plan. They walked towards you, grabbed at you, whatever part of you protruded or they could first get their hands on. Last they tried to get their teeth into you.

  Marshall, on the other hand, had adopted a smash and smash technique. He smashed their hands with one hammer and then came across the temple with the other. The corpses he left with his short handled sledge hammers all looked the same. Mangled arms, smashed temple.

  Leo of course was a dervish, she bobbed and wheeled around, slicing with her short swords, she seldom killed with a single strike, but she also seldom fought a single zombie. She preferred to take them on in groups, whittling then down slice by slice as she weaved in between them. John had collected all of the knives he found in the warehouse, just cheap case knives, but he could throw them from fifty feet or one foot away and put them in a zombie’s eye. He worked the hardest to maintain the slightest distance, I’m sure he was deadly in close quarters, but he liked to have some room to work.

  The surprise of the day was Bookbinder. He moved with grace like Leo and strength like Marshall. He used a machete and a tire knocker, which looked a lot like a small wooden bat. This small club was about 18 inches long and solid oak. Charlie used it to steer the zombies, lining them up, controlling them.

  On more than one occasion I watched him jam the miniature club in the mouth of a corpse and drive it to the ground, following that up with a quick thrust from his machete, which he’d ground to a point, instead of the usual rounded tip. He was a normal, unaltered, every day human, but he was every bit a lifetime, career warrior. All of my advantages, being able to read auras and being able to consider and see my opponent’s next move make me probably equal to Bookbinders natural combat prowess

  Almost all of M1 carried the same weapons combination and all of them fought with the same style, clearly Charlie had been training them. Control first, kill second. They all used their club as a blocking, driving almost shield like weapon. On more than one occasion I saw them jam it in the mouth of a zombie at the last moment, saving their arm or a comrade’s arm from a bite. These men were not immune, or if they were they didn’t know it and yet they fought with the same fierceness, almost abandon with which the four of us did.

  We stopped at the gas station before leaving town. They had gasoline tanks buried in the front of the store; this was one of those mega convenience stores with thirty gas pumps and ten diesel pumps.

  “I just want to see what they have for now; we’re going to have to make another run out here.” I said. “But first I’d like to figure out some way to store a large quantity of gasoline back at the farm. I don’t want to have to make trips out here every couple of days. And I don’t trust that others won’t either take all the gas or wreck it so no one can use it. Let’s take an inventory of what’s here, I’ll be right back.”

  The front doors of the convenience store had been blown apart, maybe by shotgun blasts or maybe from a vehicle, it was hard to tell from the mangled mess. I stepped through the doorway crunching on broken glass. Just inside the doors was a zombie with an ornately carved African looking short spear sticking out of its head. On my way by, I yanked the spear free and walked down the aisles carrying it like a walking stick. In the 2nd to last isle, I found what I was looking for, the M&M’s. Max loved M&M’s. He’d be thrilled to have some. I took every bag of every flavor M&M, emptying the boxes of candy into my backpack.

  I opened the refrigerator and took a diet Mountain Dew off the rack. It was hot. Not just not cold, but hot. I grabbed three more and added them to the top of the pack, before returning to the front of the store. Behind the cash register, I grabbed three cartons of cigarettes, filling the rest of my pack with every flavor of menthol cigarette left on the shelves. I walked back out in the late afternoon sun to see Marshall and John talking animatedly.

  “Hey guys, what’s up?” I asked.

  “Marshall says there’s ten thousand gallons of fuel here, across the three grades of gasoline you blokes have. I don’t see how he gets to that number, by my calculatio
ns, there’s 38,000 liters.”

  “John, that’s 10,038 gallons.” I said after a second’s calculation. I grinned “We’re in America, use imperial measurements, the metric system is flawed.”

  “Don’t make me beat you within 2.54 centimeters of ya life.” He replied with a smirk.

  We all laughed and we loaded back up in the trucks.

  At the edge of the business section of town was the library. It had been built only a few years before, during the housing boom of the early 2000's, when tax revenue was high and the town felt like it had all the money in the world. They’d spent $16 million dollars on that library, something that had disgusted me at the time. Now I was grateful that it was there. A huge three story stone building with triple pane UV protected bullet proof glass, surrounded by giant stone planters with huge trees growing in them. The stone planters were big enough to stop a large truck, modeling the architecture of post 9/11 Washington DC. The knowledge of mankind was safe in that building and there it would stay, in the most protected place, until we were ready to go retrieve it.