All That I See - 02 (37 page)

I pulled out of the cemetery then around and onto the bridge. I headed north to see if what they said was true about the zombies from
Riverton
. I also wanted to know how much damage they had done north of Clayfield.

I was disgusted
by
what I saw. I know it shouldn’t matter, but it did. Clayfield is my hometown. It is where I was born and where I grew up. The only time I was really away was when I was in college. I love the town even if all the good citizens had changed into monsters. These assholes had turned the area north of town into smoldering rubble. It looked like something from a war movie. Black smoke billowed and rolled from several places merging into one big cloud. There was a slight breeze from the south, so I was able to stop a couple of blocks away and stay out of the smoke. Ahead, visibility had been reduced considerably. The four-lane highway, cluttered with debris, disappeared into the dark haze.

I parked and got out. I leaned against the front of the truck and unscrewed the lid on that bottle of cheap red. I took a drink and surveyed the battered landscape in front of me. I was grateful they had stopped here to have their fun. Downtown Clayfield’s old buildings, though scarred from the initial unrest, were at least still standing and mostly intact. I took another drink. There was a partial pack of cigarettes in the truck; I was tempted to have one. Why the hell not? I was alone here, and my days were likely numbered anyway. What did I have to look forward to? I took another drink and listened to the ringing in my ears. Why the hell not indeed.

I went back to the cab and climbed in, leaving the door open. I pushed in the truck’s cigarette lighter and tapped a Pall Mall out of the pack. The scent of the unlit cigarette brought on a wave of nostalgia. The lighter popped out, and I immediately felt a twinge of pain where my earlobe used to be. I touched the end of the lighter to my cigarette and drew in a long breath. It was good….disgusting, but good. I exhaled and coughed, my lungs no longer accustomed to it. It made me light-headed, but I took another drag. Of course, I couldn’t allow myself to have any more. I could remember how difficult it was for me to run back in the days when I was a smoker, and I didn’t need anything slowing me down.

I took another drink of wine and just stared. My next plan should be to find a tractor with a plow or disc attached so I could break the ground at the stables. Tractors, like guns, were easy to find around Clayfield.

Then I saw movement ahead in the haze that was different from the movement of the smoke. I took another drink then leaned forward against the steering wheel, squinting to see. A person emerged from the smoke, walking on the center, double, yellow lines. It was a woman, and her hair was all frizzed out away from her head. She was infected, but not yet in a state of decay. Then another came out of the smoke. Then hundreds came. The undead from Singletree and
Riverton
and, I suppose, from across the river, had arrived. Clayfield was about to “get all gooned up.”

Chapter 44

Naturally, I was concerned, but I didn’t get frantic the way I might have a month before. I would just get out of their way. The streets of Clayfield had been clogged with zombies before, and this would be no different. I made a U-turn and drove up onto the bridge then made another U-turn so I could watch them come in. I wanted to get an idea about numbers. Down below me to my right were the railroad tracks, the cemetery, and the other tank.

The crowd was enormous. They just kept coming out of the smoke. There were thousands. I was kind of glad my ears were ringing so I couldn’t hear the sound of them.

Then I could see the shadow of something big coming through the haze. I cranked my truck and another tank punched out of the smoke like a football team making an entrance through a breakaway banner. It was moving fast and smearing every zombie in its path. The cannon was pointed behind it, and there was someone on the turret manning the .50 caliber machine gun. Directly behind the tank was one of those armored personnel carriers that looked like a big, camo SUV with a gun on top.

I shifted into reverse and backed away as fast as I could. I went down over the rise of the hill, turned, and shifted into drive, heading toward downtown ClayfieId. In my mirror, I saw the tank top the hill. I wanted to get out of view. I took a left to shelter between two buildings. I waited, hoping they would blow past. They did not. The tank rolled to a stop in front of me. The guy on the machine gun swiveled around and gave me a wave. I was confused by their friendliness then I remembered I was in one of their vehicles. I watched in my mirror and waved back. Then the personnel carrier pulled alongside the tank. The driver’s door opened and out stepped Wheeler.

I took a drink of wine and wiped my mouth on my arm. Wheeler waved to me then looked down the street behind his vehicle to see how close the zombies were. He adjusted his NASCAR cap and started toward me. I took another
drink, put the bottle down, grabbed the AR-15, and
climbed out, keeping my head down.

“They cleared out!” he yelled to me. “We ought to cross over into Illinois while we can. Y’all did real good!”

I lifted my rifle to my shoulder and put the sights on him.

He stopped, “What are you doing?!”

Men like him are supposed to die in some spectacular way, I suppose. He didn’t. It was quick, and he was confused by it all. I was okay with that. I suppose, too, that I could have given one of those bad one-liners like they do in action movies before I shot him. I could have said something like, “Welco
me back to Gayfield, mothafuckah
!” But I couldn’t think of anything to say at the time, and it would have been silly anyway. After he hit the ground, I put
a
bullet in his groin…just because.

I was startled when I heard the .50 caliber. I looked up expecting to die any second, but the man on the machine gun was pointing his weapon down the street at the approaching horde. I jumped back in my truck, and pulled away from there.

Just as I got over to the next street, the machine gunner looked over to check on Wheeler. Finding him dead and seeing me in retreat, he swiveled around. I mashed the gas pedal, and I almost made it. That .50 caliber chewed up the rear end of my truck including my back right tire. It wasn’t enough to stop me right then, but it slowed me down, and eventually I would have to abandon the vehicle.

I drove as well as I could down the residential street, and kept glancing in my mirror for any sign of pursuit. When I got to the next intersection, I looked to my right. On the street over, running parallel with me was the tank, just a couple of beats behind me. I knew, however, that
at
my current rate of speed, they could catch up  by the next cross street. Then in my mirror, the personnel carrier turned onto my street.

I took a hard left into a driveway, then across the small lawns of two different houses and crashed through a picket fence to the next street over. I made a left heading back toward the Sons of the Confederacy Cemetery.

I limped along for two and a half blocks then the truck refused to go. The transport came around the corner fast. I grabbed my two rifles and left the t
ruck. I ran first down the road
then cut through a yard and between two houses. The transport followed. In the distance, I heard the
chng chng chng chgung!
of the machine gun on the tank. It sounded like it was several blocks away, possibly even in downtown.

I tried to stick to narrow spaces so my pursuers couldn’t follow. The vehicle stopped briefly and six men emptied out of the back. Then the transport sped down the street to head me off while the men came in from behind. The guns I was carrying were slowing me down, but I didn’t dare drop them. I needed to find a place to make a stand. I was tempted to run into one of the houses I kept passing, but I knew I’d be like a fish in a barrel for them there. I took a quick peak over my shoulder. They were fanning out. I had to do something quickly or they would surround me. One of them took a shot at me.

I spotted a figure out of the corner of my eye and turned my head. It was a zombie shuffling my direction beside a house. I kept running. Then there were four zombies ahead of me. I cut around a parked car and ran behind a house where it shared a yard with another house. The next street over was jammed with the undead. It was the overflow from the
Riverton
migration. I hadn’t been paying attention to my exact location, but I was very close to the cemetery.

Behind me were six men with guns. To my left were thousands of hungry zombies. One more block and I would be in the cemetery. It wasn’t ideal, but at least there would be plenty of stones I could hide behind. Where was the troop transport? Another shot rang out. If I could just get into the cemetery….

Then the big, armored truck was suddenly in front of me. I didn’t miss a step; I changed direction and headed off to the right. That’s about when everything converged. I heard the guns opening up behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see the men engaging the advancing undead horde. 

The Sons of the Confederacy Cemetery is not a Civil War cemetery. There are graves from that time period in there, but there are also older and recent graves there too. The Sons of the Confederacy was the organization that paid for the maintenance of the grounds for several decades until all its members died off and the upkeep fell to the city. The name stuck, however. The cemetery covers
tens
of acres and is park-like with old trees, walking paths, and benches. Some of the wealthier families of Clayfield’s past had been able to afford more elaborate stones, statues, or above ground burials in mausoleums. In the middle of the cemetery was a twenty-foot obelisk topped by a stone angel holding a trumpet.

I kept my eyes on the angel. From where I was at the time, I could just see it above the trees. That was my destination. I knew that the monument was flanked with double mausoleums on either side. It would provide excellent cover, and if I needed, I could climb out of reach of the creatures. The grounds had changed some since my last visit. I had never seen the grass this high before. It was
n’t overgrown
by any stretch, but it was about calf high on me. Of course, by the end of the year, the place would be unrecognizable. Nature would reclaim everything eventually.

As I ran past the second row of headstones, the stone to my immediate left was shattered by a bullet. There was a very old mausoleum and a juniper tree ahead, and I decided to take cover between them for a moment so I could assess the situation and catch my breath.

Out in the street that bordered the cemetery, the undead pressed in. I looked to the hill and bridge that rose up next to the cemetery and over the railroad tracks. It was packed with them. The healthy men that were pursuing me were dangerously close to the mass of people closing in on them. They would fire into the mob, fall back, fire again, and fall back. They were wasting time and bullets. They should have focused their efforts on running. The troop transport had moved down the street and had entered the cemetery near the back fence.

I took off again toward the angel monument. There were zombies in the cemetery too, and I didn’t think they were with the
Riverton
group. There weren’t many of them, but they were scattered around, and they made me nervous.

I ran past four more rows of headstones and stopped to check my back. The zombies had advanced well into the cemetery. The healthy men, now down to four, were moving my direction backward through the stones firing into the crowd. The .50 caliber machine gun on the tank sounded closer now. Off to my left, the armored truck was weaving through the sto
nes on
its way toward the healthy survivors.

I had an opportunity now
to reduce one of my enemies. If
I waited and allowed that armored transport to pick up the men, I wou
ld have to deal with them later.
I did a quick look around to make sure none of the zombies were close to me then I knelt behind a headstone and used it to steady my rifle.

When I was a kid, I watched this old movie with my mom. It was
Sergeant York
, starring Gary Cooper. For some reason, the most memorable scene in the movie is where the main character talks about shooting geese. He said you shouldn’t shoot the lead goose, because the other geese would scatter. If you start with the last goose, you could shoot them all. That memory came to me as I was kneeling there behind that headstone and lining my gun sights up on the four men running for their truck.

The last goose was shorter than the others. He was working harder to keep up and stay ahead of the zombies. I thought they might just get him anyway. If I shot the guy in front of him, it would probably slow him down for that second or two needed for the creatures to catch him. I moved the rifle, aimed at the third man, and fired. He fell to the ground, and his running momentum sent him tumbling. The short fellow behind him hesitated and looked around. You can’t hesitate when zombies are on your ass.

I moved my gun to take out the second man back. I fired, and he fell. The man in back slowed again, unsure what to do, and that’s when they caught up. One of the things snagged his shirt collar. He twisted out of its grasp, but five more swarmed in. He went down beneath them.

The man in the front never looked back. He almost made it to the personnel carrier, but I got him before he could. The carrier kept on coming, but when the driver noticed that the men were down, he changed direction, heading deeper into the cemetery and away from the army of zombies. The horde continued to press in, so I
made for my
destination.