El Paso Under Attack - 01 (14 page)

However, in just a few seconds, he called out that he was ready.

“That’s all great Jaxon,” I shouted through the hacking. “But we’re still trapped in here and if your idea is to blow us and them up, I’m not down for that.”

Jaxon wasn’t even looking at me. He was cutting off a piece of sofa fabric with his knife and putting it on a tiny pile of trash. He lit this into a small fire about the size of a fist and then he turned his attention to one of the nearest walls. After making sure it was the one he wanted, he punched it so hard, the whole room shook. His fist went right through the wood or plaster or whatever it was. He then took out his tomahawk and began hacking and kicking at the hole until it was big enough for him to fit through.

“Hit it Tito.” He shouted.

Tito did something all right, very suddenly; the room was filled with the smell of gas. It almost over powered the smell of decay that was coming from outside the door.

“Move Dudley move,” shouted Tito as he dived through the hole and into the bedroom of the next apartment.

I was right behind him. Jaxon was next. I must say, it was a nice apartment, very nicely decorated.

“Same thing,” shouted Jaxon to Tito.

The zombies would soon be through the barricade of Tito’s apartment, so we started barricading up the hole we had just created as Tito ran to the next kitchen.

In less than three minutes, the zombies were through and working on this new barricade. Jaxon was pounding through another wall. The cut on his head was still bleeding profusely and he had to periodically wipe the blood away to keep his vision clear.

We were through the next wall, and into the next apartment. There was a dead man in the bathroom. I went to make sure he wasn’t going to come at us, while Tito worked on the stove and Jaxon barricaded the new hole.

It was a suicide. The guy stepped into the hot water of the bathtub and opened his veins. I felt sorry for him. I wanted to just sit and take a minute. The world was going to shit. I don’t know why this out of everything I had seen brought it home for me, but it did.

Jaxon was grabbing me. He was shoving me through the new hole he’d made. I don’t know how far the zombies were behind us. I have no idea. Everything became a blur.

I knew I was cracking; I just couldn’t get my shit together. It didn’t seem to bother Jaxon any, it was almost like he expected it to happen eventually. He had me by the wrist and was dragging me around. Blood was flying off of him and hitting me in the face. Pieces of drywall and white dust were sticking to the blood.

Suddenly, Jaxon stopped.

“Fucking blood in my eyes,” he shouted. Then a slew of obscenities came out of him.

I caught a glimpse of his eyes…the whites had actually been stained pink from all the blood in them. He ran to this new apartments sink as Tito began to tear the stove from the wall.

Quickly he washed the blood off his face and out of his eye’s.

“Ah,” he shouted after dunking his entire head in the water. “It itches.”

Tito stepped away from what he was doing and ran over to Jaxon who was writhing on the floor.

“Holy shit Jaxon,” whispered Tito. “That cut is closing up.”

Another twenty seconds I’m guessing, I’m still not sure, and Jaxon was back on his feet. He grabbed my wrist and dragged me through yet another hole and into yet another apartment.

I’m guessing we went through about eight of these apartments. I wasn’t counting. I was actually trying to get a decent look at Jaxons head wound. It was tough to see, but it did indeed seem to have at least stopped bleeding. I was mesmerized. A couple of minutes ago that wound was gushing blood, now it wasn’t bleeding at all.

“Let me see your head.” I asked.

“What?” He answered. He wasn’t really paying any attention to me at the moment. He was looking out the window.

“I wanna see your head.” I repeated.

This got his attention. He walked over to me and grabbed my shoulders.

“You need to snap out of it.” He said while looking in my eyes.

Boom!!!

The first apartment had blown. The second apartment followed in a dull whump.

“Move Tito,” shouted Jaxon as he grabbed my hand and jerked me out the front door.

The three of us were running back up the street towards the quads. Most of the zombies must have been inside the apartments trying to get at us, because there weren’t many of them on the sidewalks. The ones that were there rushed us of course, but Jaxon shot them down with his pistol. We could see large groups of them running after us from farther down the street in the opposite direction than we were heading, but they were only just reaching Tito’s apartment building, so we weren’t that concerned.

It wasn’t even a minute before the entire building went up in the loudest explosion that I’ve ever heard in my life. The sheer force of it knocked us all off our feet.

I must have blacked out, because when I came to Tito was screaming. A female zombie was on top of him and trying to bite at his throat. I grabbed my pistol and shot her right in the spine.

Jaxon threw her off and helped him to his feet. I think he must have gotten hit with something in the explosion, because the back of his shirt was ripped and the bruise that was forming covered half his back.

“No more need to be quiet,” said Jaxon as he pulled his rifle off his back.

I did the same and smiled as Tito held out his hand for a gun.

“You can’t shoot dickhead,” said Jaxon.

“Give me a gun damn it,” growled Tito.

“You still don’t have a sense of humor.” I added. I felt a lot better now. Whatever happened to me had finally passed.

“Look who finally decided to join us,” growled Tito.

“I’m not giving this dickhead my gun.” I said. “He never went to the range with us. He’ll probably end up shooting me in the ass.”

Jaxon wasn’t paying any attention again. I looked over to what he was staring at. Tito’s entire apartment building was a huge tower of smoke and flame. The large groups of zombies that had been running after us must have caught some of the blast, because all of them (at least a hundred) that weren’t in pieces were slowly rising to their feet.

“We better move,” said Tito.

“Wait a minute.” I answered. “Look at what’s left of the walls.”

Tito took another look and saw what I was pointing at. The walls of Tito’s building, or at least what was left of them after that huge explosion were beginning to buckle. Just as everyone else began to notice this, they collapsed with an ear shattering screech. The entire building came down as we looked on, then more explosions began to sound off, blowing chunks of metal and wood and dust hundreds of feet into the air as the rest of the complex erupted.

The hundred or so zombies that were littered around the building were buried in the rubble. It didn’t mean we wiped out all the zombies in the area, but we sure as hell made a huge fucking dent.

“
I’ve seen that explosion on the news. It was a gigantic mushroom cloud that could be seen from the blockades around El Paso. For a while there, the citizens were worried that the government had started bombing the city. It took about five press conferences before people began to believe that the government had nothing to do with it.
”

Yeah, it was just my uncle visiting a friend.

“
You make it sound all nonchalant.
”

To be honest, we were just happy to be alive. We knew the military had quarantined the city and after the initial shock wore off, we knew the citizens outside the city were demanding that something be done, but all of it was rather far away and disconnected. We were at ground zero. It was almost like the outside world didn’t exist.

“
So you never considered that people outside the military blockade would see the explosion?
”

I doubt any of us even gave it a seconds worth of thought. We still had to get back to the safe zone. That’s all we cared about. We headed towards the four way intersection as fast as we could go, because at that point, the neighboring apartment buildings began to catch fire from all the burning debris. Jaxon was limping. His back was pretty messed up. Every now and then I could see him wince. Yet, he never complained. I secretly think he used his own body to shield either Tito or myself.

There will still zombies afoot, let’s not be incorrect on that point. As of yet, they weren’t part of any large groups, so they were at least easy enough to shoot down. I finally relented and gave Tito my pistol. Didn’t do him much good, he can’t shoot.

We had crossed the intersection and were heading back up towards the desert before things got interesting. The houses were now on either side of us and it was a good thing, because Jaxon was reaching his limit of pain tolerance.

“Jaxon,” I said. “The sprinklers in that yard are going off.”

“So?”

“They’re spraying water everywhere.” I answered. “Go sit in front of it for a second and see if that helps any.”

He didn’t say another word. He just walked over and dropped in the soggy grass, right in front of a sprinkler. The water began to spray over him. It was cleansing the blood off of his back and for the first time, I actually saw it happen.

The grass all around him began to writhe and churn. Jaxon didn’t seem to notice, it was like he’d found a little slice of heaven. He was just kneeling there as the water hit his back. His eyes were closed…

Have you ever had one of those deep tissue massages?

“
Yes…why?
”

It looked kinda like that. He was there, but not really. There was a definite easing of pain; I could see it in his face. His entire body was relaxing.

“
What about the grass?
”

It was still moving, like it was alive. It grew and stretched towards him. It wrapped around his fingers and eased up his arms and back. The weirdest thing was, Jaxon didn’t seem to mind. Then his eyes opened.

He was looking past our astonished faces and back down the road. Then, his eyes narrowed and he pointed.

The corpses that weren’t utterly destroyed in the fire came forth. They were far away, but they were moving as fast as their damaged and burnt bodies could carry them. Personally, I couldn’t believe it. I had thought that we’d gotten all of them, but zombies just keep on coming. It’s irritating how relentless they are.

We only had moments.

“We need to move,” said Tito.

He was right. We needed to get to the quads as soon as possible. The dead were coming fast and they were many.

Jaxon just stood up. All the grass that was wrapping around his body immediately released him.

“That’s pretty fucking weird.” He said.

We ran as fast as we could. It wasn’t easy, I was exhausted and Tito, who constantly bragged about being able to run something like eight miles a day, was really feeling the exhaustion. He later blamed it on being cooped up in his apartment without enough food. I call bullshit.

Jaxon was re-energized. It was like he had all the energy in the world to just burn and throw away. Still, the zombies were gaining. We’d been through too much. Jaxon was behind us and pushing at our backs.

I began to smell the charred skin as they got closer and closer. The zombie screams shattered the once quiet neighborhood as they rattled forth from the dried out husks that used to be human throats.

Then the fun began.

The zombies that were inside the homes came out. It must have been those weird screams. They were ahead of us, blocking us off from the guard rail and the quads behind it.

Jaxon had a tomahawk in his right hand and his pistol in the other. He ran forth to meet them head on.

Boom, boom, boom, the corpses that didn’t fall from his bullets met the crunching power of his tomahawk. He was clearing our way.

“Keep moving!” He shouted. “Don’t try to fight them, just keep moving forward.”

We did what he said and followed the wake of destruction that became our path to survival.

I would have liked to stop and admire his efficient killing abilities, but I was just so exhausted. I grabbed Tito and pulled him along beside me. The burnt zombies that were chasing after us were too damn close.

Jaxon was over the guard rail and starting the quads. The sound was beautiful. They were so close, but still so far away.

With the quads running, he stood on the guard rail and took aim with his rifle. I panicked at this point. If he felt the need to fire off some shots, the zombies must be closer to us than I thought.

I didn’t want to look behind me, but I did anyway…less than ten feet and gaining.

I poured on the last of my strength. Crack, crack, crack!

The shots rang out. They were deafening. They were salvation. The dead that met the bullets began to fall. The ones behind them began to trip over their fallen brethren. We began to pull away. Not much, but enough.

Enough that when we went over the guard rail, we had enough time to jump on the quads and zoom away in a trail of hot sand and small rocks.

The dead could not keep up. We lost them in the desert. No doubt that they’d eventually turn up around the fences of our safe zone, but they’d be easy enough to deal with there.

“
Another daring escape, you survived the un-survivable once again. Mentally, how were you holding up?
”

I felt pretty good to be honest with you. I mean, I was exhausted and worried that we might ride around some large hill and end up in the middle of a large pack of zombies before we made it back to the safe zone, but I really felt pretty damn good.

“
Did you encounter another large pack of zombies?
”

In point of fact, we did not. It was smooth sailing all the way back. We even stopped at one point to have some water and let the quads cool down.

“Well that was fun,” said Tito after a few uncomfortable moments of silence.

“You ready to do it again?” asked Jaxon.

“Hell no,” shouted Tito back at him. “I never wanna be anywhere near another zombie.”

We laughed for a long time. Finally, I asked the question that was on probably everyone’s mind.