Generation Dead - 07 (22 page)

For what seemed to be an eternity, I waited on the stairs.  I counted the pictures on the wall. I unloaded and reloaded all of my magazines.  I figured out my axe was actually sharper than my knife.  I tied and retied my shoes.  I found myself bored enough that I was looking for a marker so I could put mustaches on the people in the pictures.

Chapter 33

Suddenly,
Jake appeared and he was walking casually.  He went into each room and waved to the zombies outside.  He then went to the back door and opened it, waving and hollering at the zombies.  In an
instant,
he was the most popular girl at the party, and everyone wanted to dance.  When the drift started towards the door, he jogged back inside, and ran to the front door, hooting and making noise to get attention.  When that worked really well, he bolted for the stairs and I was just a step ahead of him.

We waited at the top with Julia, who looked nervous and excited at the same time.  She put her gun away, no longer needing it, and we waited for the house to start filling up.  The first few zombies wandered through the downstairs,
but not enough for what we want
ed.  The good news was zombies didn’t look up all that often, unless they had a reason.  If we stood still and became part of the furniture, we were relatively safe where we were.  Of course, if we were downstairs,
they would
be ripping us to shreds right now.

The rooms began to fill up as more and more zombies came in the doors, and there
were
a good number of them at the bottom of the stairs.  Smoke began to filter up as well, increasing out need to get out soon. 

I took the opportunity
we had to look at the zombies carefully.  They were very fresh, having turned only a few hours ago.  Considering how many there were, and the lack of injuries, there was something wrong about this setup.  I was about to bring it up to Jake when he started yelling.

“Hey!  Dumbasses!  Up here, you ravenous wrecks!  Come along, you can take a nice juicy bite out of my ass!  Come on!”  Jake was somewhat poetic in his smack-talk.

As one, dozens of heads turned upwards, and simultaneously they opened their mouths and groans.  It wasn’t a pretty sight,
or
a pretty sound.  They all began moving towards the stairs, and the really creepy thing was they never broke eye contact.  Even climbing the stairs, they would trip and fall, catch themselves or stumble down a bit, but they never stopped looking at us. 

“Moving
on,
” Jake said, and Julia pulled us towards the far bedroom.  We left the other doors open, hoping we could fit as many as possible in the house before it completely went up.

Inside the
room,
we closed the door, and Julia stuffed a couple of pillowcases under the door right before Jake and I moved a heavy dresser in front of the door.  It wouldn’t hold them forever, but we just wanted to get them up here.  The heavy footfalls in the hallway told us we were successful up to a point.

“When might we make our escape?” I asked, eyeing the sheets that were twisted together and tied to one leg of a brass-framed bed.

“We need to make sure as many of them are up here as possible.” Julia wandered over to the door and screamed a few times.  It sounded pretty realistic, like someone was losing their mind over the thought of being torn to shreds and eaten while still alive.  Go figure.

Jake and I winced at the sound.  “Didn’t know she was an actress,
too,
” Jake said.

I held my hands over my ears. “I’d have p
referred not knowing.”

Regardless of whether we liked it or not, it seemed to have the desired effect.  Zombies began pounding on the door, and one of them managed to turn the knob, so the door began to open.  Smoke poured into the room, and Jake and I had a hard time pushing back on the dresser.  Our eyes were starting to water and it was getting hard to breathe.

“Time to go!”
Jake said.  I motioned for him to go and he shook his head at me.  “Not this time, bro.  You’re heading out.  Give me your gun, in case I need to buy some time.” 

I handed it over, and went to the window.  Julia was waiting and I told her I would be going first, in case there was a problem on the ground
.
“You think I can’t handle a zombie?” She challenged, with a little gleam in her eye.

“One, yes.
 
Five, not so much.
Remember the house in the city?” I reminded her of her hiding in a closet.

“Oh sure, you had to bring
that
up.”  Julia sounded down, but she handed over the sheet.

“This isn’t getting easier!” Jake yelled from across the room.

“Gone!”
I yelled back.  I slipped out the window and slid down the rope of sheets.  I tried to avoid the first floor window, and jumped the last six feet, pulling out my tomahawk and one of my knives.  Julia was right behind me and landed heavily.  She got up, and checked herself for injuries, finding none
except
to her pride.  I knew better than to comment.

On the ground, there weren’t any zombies nearby, but I thought I saw movement around the front.  I looked up for Jake and watched him fly out of the window, trailing the sheets he held in both hands.  The rope went taut, and Jake snapped around, slamming face first into the side of the house.  He let go of the rope and fell the last five feet, landing on his back.

I wanted to go over and help him, I really did.  But I couldn’t do much more than stand there and silently shake from the laughter that kept me from moving to help.  Julia was in no better shape, holding her hand over her mouth and facing away.

Jake didn’t help the situation. 
He lay sprawled on the ground
and made a noise like a cross between a moan and a burp.  Every time he made the noise, I started laughing again. 

After a few minutes, I was able to help, somewhat.  I went over to Jake, and grabbed him by an arm.  I dragged him away from the house, which was showing signs of a serious fire.  I pulled him to his feet and he stood there holding his nose and his back.

“
Heh
,
heh
.
  Jake,
heh
, you okay?
Hee
hee
.”
I tried to be serious, but it wasn’t working.  Julia was trying to hold it in, but air kept getting out and it sounded like her mouth was farting.  That didn’t help at all.

Jake leaned back, checked his hand for blood, and said, “
Ow
.”  He shook his head and twisted his torso.  “Seemed like a good idea when I went over it in my mind.”

“At least you didn’t say ‘Watch
this,
’” I said, returning to the land of the sane.  “Come
on,
let’s see if we need to finish off anyone.”  We went towards the front of the house, and through the
windows,
we could see flames were erupting out of the
middle of the floor and up along the walls.  The old wood in the building was perfect fuel for the fire, and it was spreading quickly.

Smoke was pouring out of the second floor windows, and anything living in there would have been dead a while ago.  The dead things were still moving around, oblivious to the smoke and flames.  On the first floor, several zombies had already caught fire, and were setting alight anything they bumped into.  It looked like this was going to be quite the campfire in a few minutes.

In the front of the
house,
three zombies
got up from their feast to come at us.  I reached for my gun, only to realize Jake had it.  I turned to Jake but he already had it out.  He fired from the hip, and in three seconds, three shots rang out, and three zombies fell completely dead.

I was stunned.  “What the hell was that?  When we’re on the range, you couldn’t hit the side of a barn if you were standing inside it. 
You been
holding out on us?”

Jake shrugged. 
“Can’t explain it.
  If I take the time to aim, I nearly always miss.  If I just snap a shot at something, I always hit it.  It’s like my brain turns off and lets my body do what needs to be done.”

I shook my head. “Well, why not?”  Julia just watched with a smirk on her face.  “
Gimme
back
my gun.”

Chapter 34

We reached
the spot where the zombies were and stopped cold.  On the
grass,
there was a person, or
rather
what used to be a person.  His hands were tied behind his back, and his mouth was gagged.  He was we
aring nothing more than a pair o
f underwear, and his legs, the parts that weren’t chewed on, looked like they had been cut with something very sharp.  His insides had been ripped out and eaten, and his face and throat were torn apart as well.  His legs had huge strips of muscle torn away, and there was a lot of blood all over the place.

Jake looked the man over, then took his knife and used it to lever the man onto his stomach.  The man’s back was a mass of small wounds, and they looked like burns from where I was standing.
  As a precaution, Jake stabbed the man in the head, making sure he didn’t come back later.

Stepping away
, Jake looked at the ground then signaled Julia and I to get to the truck and follow.  Curious, I did what I was told without protest.

Behind us, the flames had consumed the center of the house, and the rest was starting to go up.  Two of the bedroom windows had opened up, allowing flames to escape in a rush towards the sky.  It looked like we had managed to get all of the zombies inside, so I was calling that a victory, at least.

We followed Jake, who was studying the ground and walking slowly.  It looked like he was tracking something, but I couldn’t tell what it was.  There weren’t enough footprints to follow, and I didn’t think Jake was a good tracker, so he had to be seeing something.

We followed Jake for about a mile, getting back into town.  The trail led Jake to a playground by a school.  I noticed as we drove that many houses had their front doors open, and several showed signs of violence, even from the street.  The situation was very strange. 

At the playground, there
were
a lot of rope pieces on the ground, and one door of the school was open.  I stopped the truck and Julia volunteered to look insi
de, taking her melee weapon
, just in case.  I walked around the playground, wondering what Jake had seen and if he was seeing the same
thing,
I was.

I met up with Jake in the middle of the playground, and he was looking at something on the ground.  I bent down and took a look, then stood up quickly.  It was a large syringe, and inside was the blackest, vilest, most foul substance this side of hell could produce.  It wa
s a syringe full of
Enillo
Virus infected blood
.  That little needle had enough
viruses
in it to kill the entire population of the capitol without even breaking a sweat.  It was
half-full
, and I began to understand where the other half went.

Jake looked at me, and his face was grim.  “Here’s how I see it.  Someone, don’t know who but I have an idea, came to this town last night and forced people out of their beds to come to this place.  They were tied up and then injected with the virus from that syringe.  One person was spared, and that person was wounded to the point that they bled profusely, making an easy trail for the zombies when they woke up.  They followed the trail and were waiting for us when we stepped outside the home.”

As much as I wanted to deny that scenario was too evil for someone to infect a town
deliberately
, the proof was right in front of me.  “Who would do this and why?”  I asked the obvious.

Jake sighed.  “Not to be full of myself, but we were the targets.  Who have we pissed of lately?”

I groaned. “Aw, damn.  I should have killed that old man when I had my hand on his throat.”

“How could you know?  I have a feeling this was both an experiment, and revenge.”  Jake said.

Julia calling from the school interrupted us
.  “Jake!  Aaron!  Get in here!” 

We ran with our weapons out, not knowing what to expect.  We followed Julia through a couple of corridors, and ended up in a library.  Spread out over the floor was about ten kids, varying in ages from a one year old to a twelve year old.

“Holy cow.”
  I thought about what had happened, and I looked at a lot of very scared faces.  The older kids were holding the younger kids, and several were sniffing
as if
they had been crying recently.

“They said men came in the night, and took them from their beds.  They made them come here and took them from their parents.  A man with a gun stood by the door, but he went away late last night.  They didn’t know what to do so they stayed here, waiting for their parents.  They were going to go look for them when I found
them,
”  Julia
said.