Get Off My L@wn - A Zombie Novel (24 page)

I was feeling woozy.

T
he sound at the stairway seemed to get louder.
The three soldiers moved into position at the bottom of the stairs. The
foundation started shaking. Through the cameras, I could see high explosives
ring the house in a circle at the limits of the camera’s sight.

Suddenly the men’s radios came alive. Rescue was
dropping out of the sky above us.

No sooner did the radios erupt, sheetrock that
used to form one wall of the stairway broke apart and fell. The shards of
sheetrock were on fire as were the zombies that dropped into the stairwell with
them.

The soldiers opened up with everything they had.

I don’t know if it was the cumulative stress, the
deafening noise, oxygen deprivation or what, I felt myself slipping away.
Rescue was now or…

T
he right side of my face was pushed against a
wall. Somebody was yelling at me to do something. I could not tell what it was.

My hearing wasn’t working right.

The fog lifted enough for me to realize we were
in the short vestibule leading to the inner garage door on the right and the
laundry room on the left. Despite my confusion, I saw the inner garage door was
missing. If light was coming through the door, I thought, the door should be
swung open into the house. It wasn’t there. That was strange.

There was a helmet blocking the light. It
connected to a moving body. Shit. Zombies wearing military issue helmets were
hard to put down. Ah, good. The figure isn’t trying to eat anyone. It must be a
living person.

The figure was looking through the door. He was
holding something down and against the wall, in the same way as I was being
held. It was Ruth Ann. My wife.

Like being shocked awake by cold water, the
cobwebs rapidly cleared.

The door was blasted off its hinges, the
doorframe mangled.

The soldier holding Ruth Ann suddenly turned to her.
He tried to take the assault rifle Ruth Ann held.

She resisted.

“We have to go
now!
We’ll get you another
one!”

Ruth Ann let go. The soldier laid it at the feet
of another soldier firing bursts towards the laundry room window.

Together, Ruth Ann and the soldier shielding her
disappeared through the door.

My protector shoved me forward. Then it was our
turn to run.

He grabbed me by my shoulder with such force I
almost lost my grip on the Network Attached Storage box under my right arm. That
was when I realized I was holding it. Brandt was supposed to be carrying the
box. He was dead.

Our Volvo wagon was just outside the house. Its
windows were broken but otherwise looked ready for a Sunday drive. I have no
idea how they moved it out of the garage.

Small fires burned in the garage but we were
safe to pass through.

As we rushed out to a large twin rotor
helicopter, my range of vision expanded. I saw on either side of the garage Special
Forces firing on full automatic away from the house. As I said before, firing
on full automatic means you are in deep shit. Zombie parts lay everywhere.

These men were the innermost of layers of
destruction carving a minute or two of space for our evacuation.

Now outside the garage, I could see gunships
hovering above us. Streaks of leaden light from their Gatling guns cut a mote
separating Christmas Tree from the CB2 horde.

To the south, a surprisingly small distance
beyond the curtain of gunships, a line of high explosives rained down. These
were courtesy of the self-propelled howitzers eleven miles away. Damn, they
were accurate.

We ran to the waiting rear door of the cargo
helicopter. Gatling gun and heavy machine gun fire streamed from both sides of
the chopper.

The noise inside the garage was incredible. It
was nothing compared to the sound that assaulted me when we broke the confines
of my burning home.

One Gatling gun sounds like a table saw. A dozen
sounds like a whole sawmill. Below them in pitch, sounding even more deadly was
the constant staccato of heavy machine guns. Howitzers played timpani drums. Helicopter
rotors and the howling of tens of thousands of ghouls made up a call and continuous
answer of a massive chorus.

Men dragged me roughly up the lowered cargo
door. Bill Mancheski, Orderly and Barry Clark were right behind us. The Special
Forces members collapsed their circle of covering fire quickly backing up to
the cargo door. The door started to close as the helicopter began to rise.

T
he last time I saw Christmas Tree, flames shot
through the roof where our garden and solar panels had been. Crawling like
enraged soldier ants, thousands of zombies made a mound over the burning roof.
Still more were coming up over the backs of others, trying to get at the humans
who had been there only a moment before.

Beyond them, my yard boiled with merging arms
and bodies, too thick to identify as individuals. As we ascended, the boiling
froth went on and on until it looked like storm tossed waves from the air.

Ruth Ann and I held hands.

Though we could not see the flames any more, the
pillar of smoke that rose from our home was visible for a long time.

After a while, it too was gone.

I
t has been eighteen months since the events in
this book occurred. Of the eleven troops stationed at Camp Christmas Tree, three
survived. Ruth Ann and I, along with Bill Mancheski, Orderly and Barry Clark
were airlifted to Brainerd Minnesota where we rested overnight. From there, we flew
to Door County.

Each of the soldiers went through their own debriefing
process, given some rest, then were sent off to new assignments.

Barry went to what now passed for Officers
Training School and is now on the front line in California as a Lieutenant.

Bill Mancheski is now Captain Mancheski. He
landed in the first wave on Long Island, Orderly right by his side.

Orderly died recently. There was not a scratch
on him. Being summer, the virus is airborne again. We liked Sergeant Orderly
very much.

Ruth Ann and I finally met Frank. Colonel
Franklin Schebielski turned out to be a short powerfully built cigar-smoking
career Army Intelligence officer. He liaises with a classified number of small
groups of survivors getting what utility he can out of them while helping them
cope with their circumstances. We keep in touch from time to time.

Ryan Boetche works as a technical expert for The
Internal Revenue Service tracking down illegal grow operations. Marijuana is
still legal, just taxed.

The web site bringing parents and children together
born at Christmas Tree was spun out as a non-profit operating in over 100
countries. Ruth Ann is its director.

As for me, I cannot tell you what I do. It’s
classified.

The main character of this story remains a burned
out shell. Only some of the concrete first floor walls still stand. Though the
chance of another horde in the area is remote, it isn’t safe enough yet for
repopulation. There are a number of computer-controlled rifles in the area. They
are newer, more expensive descendants of the one I pitched to Lambeau to defend
shorelines.

They still go off a lot.