Apocalypse Aftermath (17 page)

“Right now, at this moment, it looks like we’re safe.  That could change if we stay, and it could change if we leave.  But while things are quiet, everyone needs to take the opportunity to do some thinking.  Mr. Burns is right, the only condition I’m imposing while you’re with my unit is to not make things worse.  Right now that just means staying calm and not working against us.  No one has to stay, and if you want to go off on your own then feel free.

“Some of the soldiers who got out of Atlanta with us left shortly afterwards, and I didn’t stop them.  I’m not interested in running roughshod over anyone, and I don’t have the time or inclination to force people to follow me.  Everyone who stayed with me did because we all thought working together was the best option.”

“And because he’s old and knows stuff.” Swanson laughed.

Peter grimaced, but a few nervous chuckles joined Swanson’s.  “Yeah, I’m a career senior NCO, over thirty years with the Marines.  I guess I’m the guy elected to carry the torch, but as long as you’re willing to work with me, this isn’t a dictatorship.  I asked for volunteers to help with standing watch, because it’ll keep everyone safe.  I asked for volunteers to help us bring back supplies, because the help will keep everyone safe.  Volunteers, not draftees.

“I am planning on heading out fairly soon, probably to check on the FEMA sites, because I think just staying here isn’t the best plan for the coming weeks.  Or, God forbid, months.  But I’ll point this out.  The reason
you’re all even here to fight over what to do next is because eleven soldiers decided to stick with me, and we found you and got you out.  That doesn’t mean you owe us anything, but it does mean you’re alive and in a position that has options because we helped.

“I’m sure there are other people that need help, and if we run across them we’ll do what we can to help them too.  And if we can find a place that has safety and resources, a place with leadership that is trying to help on a larger scale, then that’s a place I want to be.”

“What are you, a fucking hero?”

Peter stepped on his temper firmly, even as he caught others glaring at the man who’d asked the rude question.  He shrugged.  “The most important six inches on a battlefield is between your ears.  A Marine general I respect very much said that, and it’s never been more right than it is now.  He also said engage your brain before you engage your weapon.  They both mean thinking is more important than doing, because if you’re not thinking, you won’t know what to do.

“My thinking is that if I wander around out here alone, it doesn’t matter how much training I have, how many weapons I have, or where I go with them.  My thinking is that finding someplace I can fortify and just sitting in it doesn’t help solve the problem.  That problem is zombies.  My plan is to – sooner or later, though I’d pick sooner over later – find a place that is working on that problem.  That place will probably be safe, but it’ll also be where I can do the most good.”

He looked around calmly, then shrugged again.  “I’m not a hero.  I’m just trying to help.”

Darryl opened his eyes and looked around the dim room.  The only light was a floor lamp next to the door, one with an upside down shade that sent all the light up so the scatter and bounce was indirect.  It was enough to see by, but not overly distracting when you tried to sleep.  His sleeping bag – which he was on top of, because the room was warm – was laid out right against the base of the bar in the big party room.

He was still trying to figure what had woken him when he heard two more gunshots go off outside.  No, above him, from the roof.  Darryl frowned as he saw others scattered out across the floor on their own sleeping bags and inflatable mattresses begin to stir.  Then the back door slammed open against the wall and he heard running footsteps.  A dark shape appeared in the doorway.

“Bobo!  Bobo!”

“What?” Darryl asked as he reached for his boots.  The only reason for Spider to have left the roof and come running in here had to be a bad one.

“DJ, Tiny say we got us a big fucking problem outside the fence.”

“More survivors?”  Darryl was tugging his boots
on without socks.  Spider’s edge of panic and impatience made Darryl think he probably didn’t have time for the socks.

“Naw, Tiny say they’re fucking zombies.”

“Shit.” Darryl said, finishing with his boots with enough haste to hurt as he got his feet jammed into them.  Not bothering to lace them up, or to grab for the shirt he’d discarded out of deference to the heat, he scrambled up with the holstered Glock in hand; pausing only to make sure the extra magazines were still in place in his back pocket.

“What’s that about zombies?” someone asked in the darkness.

“Spider, get everyone up.  Make sure Bobo know.” Darryl said as more gunshots went off above.  It sounded like the two rifles.  The Dogz still didn’t have but a few people who’d showed any sort of aptitude with the long guns.  Shooting at range, and with a scope to boot, wasn’t nearly as simple and straight forward as plinking away with a pistol.  Most of the brothers were carrying shotguns to back up their pistols, simply because giving them a rifle would be a waste of time.  Darryl himself was good with a pistol, but was still struggling to pick up how to use the rifle.

“Okay.  Hey, wake the fuck up.”
  Spider said, turning his attention to the rest of the room as he raised his voice.  “Dogz, let’s go.  Up and out.”

“Make sure Bobo knows.” Darryl repeated as he picked up his shotgun from the bar
top and headed for the back door.  Bobo, he knew, was a heavy sleeper.  The old biker was notorious for sleeping through the tail end of the parties that had been the clubhouse’s only previous function; and anyone who could sleep, without being stone drunk, when the Dogz were partying needed special attention to get awake.

He emerged out into the patio area, looking along the fence line quickly before starting up the ladder leaning against the back wall of the building.  Nothing caught his eye
beyond the fence, but even with the moonlight it was still dim, and the fence was tall enough to make seeing over it difficult unless right up against it.

“Yo, Tiny!” Darryl called as he mounted the rungs.  The two rifles were still going off, but PK appeared at the edge of the roof
, looking down at him while wearing an excited expression.

“Big crowd coming from the north.” the biker
told him.

“How many?” Darryl asked.

“Whole lot.  Couple dozen.”

“At least fifty.” Tiny rumbled.  Darryl heard the rifles’ bolts being worked, then both went off again a moment later.

Darryl stopped near the top of the ladder and turned to look in that direction.  The elevation let him see clearly past the fence, and he saw human shapes coming out of the tree line.  They were moving slowly, some staggering quite badly, and most were weaving or lurching sideways as they headed for the clubhouse fence.  Darryl swallowed the obvious question he’d been about to ask; no one human moved like that.  Not in numbers that large anyway.  And certainly not without attempting to communicate when people started shooting at them.

“PK, you three who rocking shotguns keep your fucking eyes on the rest of the fence.” Darryl ordered quickly.  “You fucking hear me?  Watch the fence so we don’t get nothing else sneaking up on us.
  You on fucking watch, so fucking watch.”

“Yeah, sure DJ.” PK nodded.

Darryl went back down the ladder as more Dogz started spilling out of the clubhouse.  Most of his brothers were still blinking sleep out of their eyes, and only a few of them had thought to bring their shotguns, but everyone was armed at least with a pistol.  Bobo had made it clear that no one went unarmed anywhere, even inside the clubhouse.  Darryl and Shooter had made sure everyone understood the importance of safeties, leaving weapons in the holsters, and not fucking around with them.

“North fence.” Darryl shouted, waving his shotgun over his head and pointing to make sure people knew north from south.  With brothers like Needles and Stony wandering around in a nearly perpetual haze, plus his years handling drunks as a bouncer, Darryl knew better than to assume simple directions were simple enough
for everybody.  “North.  That way.  Got a big ass clump of zombies headed in.”

Muttering and swearing arose, but Darryl raised his voice and overrode all of it as the rifle wielding bikers on the roof fired again.  “We gotta get out to the fence and take care of them.”

“In the dark?”

“On foot?”

“The fence will hold but not if we let a bunch of fucking zombies keep pounding on it.” Darryl said.  “Let’s go Dogz.”

Darryl turned and jogged toward the fence, purposefully not checking to see who was
following.  He heard other heavy footfalls trailing him though, so some were.  Darryl led the way to the center of the fence and stopped a few feet from it so he could take a look.  The ‘lot’ the clubhouse sat on had been farmland back in the 1800s, but trees had crept back in a little since.  There was still a good amount of cleared ground though, and maybe sixty feet from the fence he saw the leading edge of the ragged zombie horde.

A lot of them looked like college students, but there were both children and adults mixed in as well.  Most of the zombies had been through whatever zombies went through
being and becoming zombies, and showed signs of injury.  Some heads wobbled on necks that were bloody or had pieces of flesh missing.  A few arms dangled uselessly at their sides, though except for two that were missing entirely, Darryl couldn’t say if it was because bones were broken or something else.  Some of the zombies dragged a leg as they staggered forward, but it only slowed, not stopped, them.  One was missing a foot below the ankle, and was walking without concern – though unsteadily and decidedly lopsided– on the remaining stub.

Clothing and skin both were dirty
, and in many cases in tatters.  Shirts and pants were ripped in multiple places, some clothing only barely clinging to the body it was trying to cover.  Most were bloody, and Darryl saw bones showing where bone shouldn’t be visible; which was to say, never.  Many of the zombies showed evidence they’d been meals for other zombies before whatever was turning them from humans to corpses to walking corpses took over and made them join the ongoing dinner party.  A lot of the visible bones that weren’t the result of an obvious fracture seemed to be from the gaping bite marks in their flesh where tissue had been eaten away.

“Okay, watch where you point
the damn guns.” Darryl shouted, finally glancing around.  About thirty Dogz were spreading out along the fence.  “Use the sights like we showed you.  Take your time, shoot slow, and aim for the head like Mr. Soul told you about from the news.  There a lot of us and we got the fence, so ain’t no need for no one to get to panicking.”  He laid the shotgun down in the grass at his feet and put his hand on the holster he’d hooked back onto his belt.

“There a lot of them too.” Joker said unhappily.

Darryl drew the Glock 26 and ejected the flush magazine that was designed to fit with the pistol’s small, concealable nature.  Tucking it into his pocket, Darryl replaced it with one of his extended magazines.  With thirty-three rounds it hung quite a way out of the pistol’s grip, but Darryl didn’t care how it looked; and it looked fairly ridiculous.  What he cared about was it gave him a lot of shots to kill zombies with, and he had another one with just as many before he needed to revert to the flush mag or go looking for a box of ammo to reload the extended magazines with.

The ammunition situation was something both he and Shooter were a little concerned with.  Thousands of rounds sounded like a lot until you started dividing them among dozens of armed people.  And when getting more wasn’t as easy as just ordering some from the store.  Because they had some at the moment, getting more was lower on the list than other priorities, but Darryl had done a little watching of the news himself.

If a really big pack of zombies showed up, the Dogz could be in trouble.

Pistols started firing around him, and Darryl raised his own.  But he held his eyes on the pack without peering through his sights
yet, studying the results of the firing.  He saw a few zombies jerking a little like they were taking hits, saw a few more spray a little blood – and a lot more of other things – from definite hits, but none were falling.

I
f the Dogz kept shooting like this, there’d be a lot of trouble to go around.

“Knock it off, knock it off!” Darryl yelled, turning his head and shouting in both directions.

“They coming at us.” Perv protested.

“Make sure you aiming.” Darryl shouted.  “Stop fucking shooting until they close enough you can be sure you can hit what you aiming at.  You just wasting ammo.”

“Gotta learn some time.” Light laughed.

“Wait until I fire.” Darryl told everyone.  “Just wait.  Get used to how the sights move when you aim.  Hold steady and squeeze the trigger back nice and smooth.
  Pistols ain’t no good for long range and neither are shotguns.”

The zombies staggered closer as rifles from the clubhouse roof continued firing.  There were three back there now, but only about every third shot was killing a zombie.  Darryl waited, made himself keep waiting, as the horde continued to approach.  Corpses were noticing the line of Dogz on the other side of the fence, the heads fixating on men who stood uncertainly with weapons in their hands.  The staggering steadied into a slightly more purposeful shuffle, and the horde began to spread a little bit as individual zombies locked on to whoever had caught their dead eyed attention.