Deadfall: Hunters (18 page)

How?

The shots stopped coming after all of our men made it back into the village. It was time to drop back into the plaza, although, I have to admit, I was starting to freak out. Yeah, I had a gun as did Tague, but it was just the two of us and we didn’t know how many of those gun wielding zombie friends were out there. Sarah ducked into her house at the plaza and came out with a shotgun, so that made the odds better. The bigger problem was that we were dealing with two completely different enemies. We could deal with the slow walking undead, or we could deal with the guys with the guns, but we had no real way to deal with both, at the same time. At least not without getting killed.

The villagers had setup a reasonably good barricade fortress all around the plaza. It was a mishmash of bricks, dirt, logs and brush, all piled up in a somewhat neat circle around the plaza. It was stacked up about three to four feet, and at least more than a foot thick. It could slow down and maybe even stop a zombie and provide good cover against bullets.

Most of the women and children formed into a bunch in the middle of the plaza while the rest of us formed lines around our barricade. Then we waited. And waited. With the sun bearing down brightly on us there, right around noon, we waited. I could have used an umbrella. Or maybe, just maybe, one of those many rainstorms. Instead we roasted under the tropical sun.

First the zombies came. They looked oddly disoriented. They stumbled slowly down the road towards us, but stopped a lot, and turned around, looking back. One would bump into the other, and fall over, then a whole bunch would trip over it and they would collapse in a heap. If it weren’t for our dire situation, it would almost be comical. It was also very unlike them. While they weren’t beings of great intelligence, they were never this, stupid. Instead, they were relentless, never moving forward with any half-assedness. Yes, that is a word now.

My only guess as to what was going on was those other men.

I asked around, but nobody had seen them close enough to identify them. Blevin blurted that they just all looked alike, which Janine called him racist for. I’m not sure that’s what he was being, but I wasn’t about to say anything.

So we waited.

Slowly down that road they came, slower than I could have expected. Our extra spears were propped up against the barricade wall. I just hoped we had enough of them. When a small group of villagers broke out from the wall and decided to flee towards the north, where only a few straggling zombies were coming from, more shots burst through, and this time we could see the men, dodging through the zombies. Again, they were being completely ignored by the same zombies they were walking among. It was nerve-racking. .

Tague took a shot and hit one in the shoulder, maybe. He spun about before falling behind some zombies. Most of the walkers stopped and turned to look at him. I waited, expecting them to jump and maul the guy, but they didn’t. They just stood there and looked at him. Those that didn’t see him, just stumbled into the ones that stopped. I had to duck down again because our aggressors fired more shots at us.

One of the villagers had a gun of his own. A revolver, the old timey kind with the spiny thing in the middle. I’m sure Evan could point out what kind of gun it was. It may not have even been an old gun after all. In either case, the guy stood up and fired off two shots somewhere into the zombies. He dropped in an instant when several shots were fired in response. He was terrified.

As the first couple of zombies began to stumble into the wall, we had to keep ourselves ducked behind the wall to not get shot. All we could do was stab each zombie as it came over the wall. Most just reached over as far as their arms could go. It seemed to be working, but that meant we couldn’t keep an eye on anything. That hurt us when one of the armed men jumped over the wall. He began firing his gun and hit two men and a woman before he took a spear through his gut. As Sarah dashed to tend to the three that had been hit, I gave Blevin my gun and ran over to get the assailers gun. At least we had one more.

Janine ran back towards the center of the plaza. There was a tree in the middle, with a thick trunk and long sprawling branches. It wasn’t a very tall tree, but enough for what she wanted. She skipped up the tree and was on one of its branches and began calling out what she could see, especially concerning the armed men. Shots began pelting the tree and Blevin shouted out, but Janine hid behind the thick trunk.

As I took the gun that had dropped beside the man, he reached up to me. He wasn’t dead just yet. Judging by the spear through his gut, he probably didn’t stand a chance. Then again, the guy looked like death warmed over already. He was visibly bleeding from his eyes and ears, bleeding that hadn’t been caused by the spear. The eyes were bloodshot too. He tried saying something but I didn’t understand. As I stood back up, with his gun in hand, one of the villagers on the wall turned and kicked him hard, right in the ribs. Then he ran his own spear right through his throat.

I turned away quickly.

It’s not that I blame the guy. I’d be pissed too if someone was using zombies, somehow, to attack my village. Thing is, I will always have a very hard time with people killing people.

Janine shouted out. At least seven men among the zombies. Not that many, really. But we were in a bad position. To my left, something happened on the wall and zombies started coming in. It became a free for all, a royal rumble. At first it was hard to see the difference between zombie and man, except that man was usually using a weapon. Then, amidst all the chaos, I heard a roar of laughter. Blevin came crashing through man and zombie alike and went into his bloodrage, well, except that I call it funrage. Because of all the laughing. It’s disturbing really. I didn’t need to give him my gun. His weapons were his bare hands. Corny, perhaps, but very literal. I’m still not sure if he was just oblivious to pain, because I watched as zombies bit and tore into him, but he just kept smashing heads and breaking bones. Of course, zombies don’t feel pain either, because they kept pouring in through that gap. In his funrage, though, Blevin was able to drop so many bodies, that they piled up in the gap. Someone had the sense to push a few of those bodies into the gap and stop the flow.

Another crack rang out and Blevin’s laughter was interrupted by a maniacal scream.

I’m not a gun guy. I have never been. I grew up in Western North Carolina, so it’s odd that I never used a gun much. My dad hunted, a few times, but I never did. I certainly didn’t feel the need to have one for any other use. Hendersonville wasn’t a particularly dangerous place to live. Even in the apocalypse, I had tried my best not to use a gun if I didn’t have to, mostly because I was afraid I’d hurt someone that didn’t need hurting. On nearly every occasion that I had to use a gun, I did so with an overabundance of thought. I say this to point out that when I turned and fired my gun that very moment, it scared me as much as it scared the guy who had just come over the wall.

It also killed him.

Janine had called it out, but I hadn’t heard her. I did hear the gun shot and then Blevin scream. I spun, gun in hand, and fired before I even had time to process that there was an unknown man directly in front of me with a gun of his own. What scares me more is that it could have been a villager. It could have been Sarah or Tague. The man dropped in a heap, although still alive. Blood instantly soaked into his shirt around his waist. He screamed out in pain, grabbing onto his shirt, pressing into his stomach. He looked out at his bloody hand, then looked up to me. He too, bled from his eyes and ears. Then, Sarah cracked him over the head with a stick and he was out.

I looked down at my gun with just a moment’s hesitation. I almost thought, foolishly, of tossing the weapon aside. But within seconds, I was using it again.

Shots began thudding into our barricade much faster now forcing everyone to duck behind the wall... Tague, Sarah and I returned fire as we could, but it was hard. Every time I popped up to fire a shot, I was confused by the waves of zombies, I just couldn’t pick anything out. Meanwhile, our spear guys were under insane pressure, trying to keep the zombies from climbing over without getting shot themselves.

It was a really horrible situation to be in. I want to say it was around ten minutes of getting shot at. We could pop up, fire a few shots off seemingly randomly, just to let them know we still had a gun, but mostly just kept getting peppered. The villagers hid at the far side of our barricade, to the north, as best they could. There was a very large stone in the middle of the plaza, painted with all sorts of images, as well as the trees. Many hid behind these as best as they could. In the confusion, many darted over the northern barricade and made a dash through the village and into the woods.

I had never ever been in a gunfight like this either. I had been around the soldiers back in NC, firing their weapons against the zombies, but that was just a spectator event. Here I was, hiding behind a wall of bricks, mud and branches, trying not to get killed. I was cool, well, as cool as I could be, but terrified, at the same time. I didn’t know if the next time I popped up to fire a shot if I’d take a bullet to the head and that would be that.

We could hear them shouting, somewhere in between all the zombies. Sarah was trying to pick up what they were saying, but it was mostly “come here” or “go there”. I sure would have liked to have a truck full of gasoline to blow up just about then, but that wasn’t about to happen.

Amidst all the firing, I heard something else. A different kind of gun. Louder, sharper, more pronounced. Tague immediately looked up at me, then looked back up towards the north, from where the shot had been fired. There was this brief moment when our enemy stopped firing. It wasn’t long. Five or six seconds at the most before it started again. But it had been there.

Then the shot pierced through the chaos and again, the incoming gunfire stopped.

I think I said ‘what’ or just mouthed it, but Tague saw me and came crawling over.

“That’s a rifle, a sniper rifle.”

How he knew this, I don’t know.

The shot rang out a third time and this time, there was a more panicked hint to our enemies shouting and screaming.

A fourth shot blasted through the air and this time, the gunfire erupted. It just wasn’t directed at us this time. Shots were going off into all sorts of directions. Tague popped up to see two men behind house walls just firing. Randomly, he said, towards the north.

When I tried to get a look over our barricade, I saw something completely different. The zombies weren’t coming at us anymore. Instead, there were walking back south, out of the village. Our village spearmen sat with their backs up against our barricade sweating, bleeding, exhausted, but not doing anything. I looked back south in time to see one of our assailants run across the street trying to get from one side to the other. He tried hiding behind zombies as they were walking away. Another rifle shot hit the man right in the right leg, around the knee. The shot hit him and his leg buckled in a way legs aren’t supposed to move and he tripped over himself.

I don’t know if there were any more guys

So, just like that, the zombies started to disperse. It certainly wasn’t anything we had done. We had just managed to stay alive. At first, I thought they were walking out the road to the south, but really, they were just wandering off, aimless. I didn’t do or say anything about it for a good ten minutes I think, but then I jumped up and tried to get those around me to grab a spear and run out to try to get rid of as many as we could. I can imagine I looked like an idiot rushing out there after we had managed to survive, but, it was really just a matter of cleanup. Who knows when they might return, so the less of them there were, the better. It was also extremely easy. They were completely clueless as they wandered off. Even a lone zombie, while slow and stupid, was focused on trying to get to you. These though, had only one thought, and that was to just get away from here.

So it took a while, but many others jumped in as well, especially once they saw just how easy it was. Even the women rushed out with whatever they could find and chopped, crushed or pierced heads. It must have taken the whole afternoon. I just know it was late that afternoon, as the sun was just starting to go down, that I looked back and saw that I was way outside of the city, nearly at the edge of the woods. We had taken many of them down, but all the rest had wandered back off into the woods.

Back in the plaza, the villagers had strung up the men that had attacked us. Four of them were already dead, hit by the rifle, but three of them still lived. Long ropes were tied to their arms and they had them strung up over large branches in the trees. They hung there, bleeding, defeated. Some of the villagers were talking to them, others took turns beating them. I walked up to the edge of the plaza where Sarah was standing. The look in her face told me everything. Even the nurse in her, with the desire to help rather than harm, was gone. She was ok with whatever pain they were inflicting their prisoners.

On the other side of the plaza was our savior. Maxie.

Our captain had indeed made it back to the boat, but not before running into the band of warriors that were headed towards the village. They were armed and going back the way he had just come and he knew they were up to something. He rushed back to the One Star Wonder, got some weapons, including a rifle he owned. Today then, I learned something new. Our old man was a really good shot. The four dead and three wounded guys on the tree were proof.