Slow Burn: A Zombie Novel (28 page)

As the tiny buxom redhead finished her story and began to plead for them to take her with them, Chris started to cringe. He was just waiting for Stephen to verbally rip into the poor girl for being wholly unprepared for the tiniest thing. However, Chris looked over at Stephen, who was looking at Holly with a glazed over expression on his face.

Stephen falls in love five times a day
, Chris thought to himself, and shook his head.

“
Fine…you can come with us,” Chris offered, “but you wait in the truck for us to finish looking around, and don’t touch anything!”

Holly promised she would do as told and disappeared into the safety of the large truck.

“
Chris you come with me,” Stephen ordered, coming out of his daze. “Paul, you stay with the truck and Holly. I’ll need Chris’ help clearing the store.”

Stephen tightened up his grip on his rifle as Chris slung his and drew his pistol and a flashlight, following Stephen into the gloomy, shifting darkness inside the store. It was still morning, but the lights were not on and very little sunlight was coming through the windows, which were covered with advertisements. With all the food they had at home, they were both wondering if this was even worth the trouble.

* * * * * * * *

Approaching the huge campus of Plainfield South High School, I hit the truck roof and yelled for Jamere over the loud exhaust to turn onto the school maintenance road and follow it down to the bus barn at the rear of the property. We were driving slowly, and we could see several buses that crashed into the cornfields surrounding two sides of the property, carving deep impact paths through the tall green stalks.

“
Looks like it went bad here in a hurry,” I said from the back of the truck.

Jamere stopped the truck outside of what looked like a reinforced gate. As Jamere and I were trying to figure out how we were going to bust down the gate, Mattie pointed out the several buses already parked outside, most likely undamaged in the corn fields.

“
Good call, Mattie,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m an idiot sometimes. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“
That’s okay, Mike,” Mattie joked. “I’m the brains of this operation, you are just the muscle.”

Giving Mattie a pretend “evil eye”, I walked up to the rear of a full-sized bus and immediately saw at least a dozen former high school kids moaning and snarling at me through the windows from inside.

“
Don’t think we’ll be taking this one. Besides, a full-sized bus might be a bit hard to weave in and out of all the stalled vehicles.”

After a few minutes of debating on which bus to grab, we settled on a short bus which looked to have only a zombie bus driver trapped inside to deal with. She must have been bitten and sealed herself inside. The bus ended up coming to rest deep in the cornfield and the tall stalks were pressed up all around it as we approached, making it difficult to see very far out. I decided to let Jamere get some practice with disposing of zombies and pushed open the bus doors, retreating immediately as I let the female ex-bus driver out of the bus and into Jamere’s waiting cross fire. The roar of the shotgun echoed across the school grounds. It was a one shot, one kill for Jamere. Not an easy shot in all the standing corn. Mattie took it upon herself to take up point, and I helped her clear the bus for any stragglers inside. Finding none, I hopped into the driver’s seat.

“
I’ll back it up, you direct me, Jamere,” I called out the folding door.

I heard a rustling in the corn stalks surrounding the bus, but paid little attention at first, blaming it on paranoia. It had been windy all morning, and we were in a hurry to get out of there. It was safe to say we all had a growing feeling of unease, and the limited visibility was clearly playing with my nerves.

The bus barely started; the starter churned noisily before the engine finally caught and gradually roared to life.

“
Okay, Jamere, back me up straight as you can,” I said loudly over the bus engine.

“
Let’s move this bitch, Mike, this shit is freaking me out,” he replied, finally noticing the rustling noise coming from the corn stalks all around us.

“
Geez, the city boy is a little nervous out here with the corn,” I joked to Mattie as the bus backed out straight from the cornfield and past Jamere, who seemed stuck in a trance. He was now facing away from us nervously looking back into the tall cornstalks, looking from left to right clutching his shotgun.

“
C’mon man, hurry the fuck up!” I honked the horn to hurry him along.

Jamere jumped a good two feet straight up and cranked off a round with the shotgun.

“
Goddamn it! I ain’t playing that shit, Mike!” Jamere cursed, probably more embarrassed than anything.

I ended up laughing so hard that my eyes were closed when Mattie screamed in my ear.

“
LOOK OUT!”

From all around Jamere, dozens of teenage zombies flooded into the spot the bus occupied in the cornfield. Jamere aimed his weapon and tried to shoot the nearest one, a Hispanic boy missing a large part of his neck.

There was only one problem; Jamere forgot to rack a fresh shell into the chamber.

* * * * * * * *

At the small grocery store, deafening gunfire filled the building. After entering the store, Stephen and Chris both realized that they had bitten off more than they could chew.

“
My God!” Stephen yelled over the commotion. “There’s no end to them!”

After watching his slide lock back yet again, Chris feared that he would run out of ammunition soon. He had been transitioning from his pistol to his rifle in an effort to conserve ammunition, depending on how much room they had to maneuver. The zombies had quickly surrounded them after they had entered the grocery store and began to clear the entrance. He and Stephen were now pinned in a couple aisles over, fighting back to back.

“
Stephen, I’m out of pistol rounds!” Chris said moments later as he burned through yet another magazine, killing three more zombies that were coming directly at him in the small aisle.

Stephen, without even looking away from his current targets, let go of his rifle with his trigger hand, reached down and yanked a full Beretta magazine from his chest carrier and flipped it up and over to Chris. Chris saw the magazine, snatched it from the air as Stephen resumed firing, and slammed it home, immediately blasting two zombies in the forehead.

“
That was way too close for comfort,” Chris said. “Another second and they would have been on me like flies on shit!”

Sensing a slight ease in the attack, Stephen conferred with Chris on their next move. They were both in agreement.

“
We have got to get the hell out of here now!”

Chris didn’t even have to answer. He knew it was suicide to try for any food or supplies in here. The place looked pretty well stripped anyway.

“
Maybe if we came back with more guys,” Chris replied, “and a lot more ammunition. But now it’s run like hell time. Watch your step; we don’t know if all of these bastards are down for the count.”

Stephen responded by putting a couple of head shots into some likely suspects as they tiptoed out. By the time they made it to the door, Chris was again out of pistol ammo and had holstered it while unslinging his rifle, which contained his last thirty rounds. Blasting the last few zombies in their path, they burst free from the building and sprinted towards the truck. Reaching the cab, they saw Holly screaming while pointing back at the store. Stephen then realized Paul was not with them in the truck. Gunfire made him turn to look. Right away, Stephen saw a couple of problems. All of the gunfire was pulling zombies from a residential area behind the store, and that was the reason for the seemingly endless parade of undead.

The second problem was that Paul had finally grown a pair of stones and had approached the store on foot. He was now blasting away with the lever action at the stream of zombies exiting from the building. Of course he was a bad shot and couldn’t keep a round count either. Paul’s lever action rifle ran dry in about seven seconds. Two seconds after that he was using his rifle like a club and was swinging like a girl playing golf for the first time.

“
What the fuck is he doing?” Chris asked.

Stephen growled some curse about Democrats and hopped out of the truck, drawing his Berretta which contained his last fifteen rounds of ammunition. He looked up just in time to see a zombie latch its jaws onto Paul’s shoulder. Paul screamed as a large chunk of flesh was torn loose and at the same time pulled out the large .357 magnum and emptied the revolver into the two nearest zombies, turning their heads into a pile of mush. The next zombie wasn’t impressed by this and bit the back of Paul’s neck as he was pulling the trigger on empty cylinders. Stephen fired and took off the back of the zombie’s skull, freeing up Paul to open the cylinder and try to shake the spent shells free in order to reload. Stephen hurried to assist Paul with pistol raised and took down two additional zombies while Paul reloaded. He suddenly stopped as Paul disappeared into a mass of undead. He was then shocked as gunfire ripped from the mass and Paul emerged and struggled towards him, while dragging three zombies who still had their teeth sunken into his flesh, eating him alive.

Paul reached back and tossed Stephen the backpack containing the inhalers and antibiotics.

“
Make sure my little girl gets those! And I never liked you!” Paul screamed as he was quickly swarmed over by the zombie horde.

Stephen fired futilely into the horde, killing two of the zombies before deciding to save what was left of his ammunition. He then turned and retreated with Paul’s backpack and jumped in the truck. Chris threw it into gear and pulled away. The parking lot now contained more zombies than when they arrived.

“
I might have been an asshole to Paul,” Stephen said while looking at the bag he was holding, “but it wasn’t personal. And at least he showed some spine in the end. I got to give him credit for that.” He turned to Chris. “Take us home, Chris,” he said tiredly. “Hopefully the others made out better than we did.”

Chris sped back southbound back towards Stephen’s as Holly sat silently in the back seat feeling sorry for herself. She felt somewhat responsible for what had just happened. These were new times, however. Everyone, Paul included, was responsible and accountable for their own actions. There was no longer a government “safety blanket’” to protect them. This was something that liberals like Paul and Holly were now finding out the hard way.

Stephen managed to reach Dan on the radio and inform him that they were on their way back. Mike didn’t reply to several attempts at contact, although Stephen could see a school bus approaching from behind.

Jamere looked down at his shotgun in confusion when it didn’t go “BANG” as it should have.

“
Oh shit!” the three of us gasped in unison.

I ripped open the bus doors and watched in slow motion as the disfigured male Hispanic tore into Jamere’s right arm with his teeth. Jamere screamed and pushed him back with a shove, then racked a fresh shell and removed the Hispanic’s head with the blast. He fired at several other figures that were closing in while Mattie hurried to his side and then helped him onto the bus while he cradled his bleeding arm. I covered their retreat by unloading my M4 into the zombies, killing the closest half dozen or so, buying us some time.

“
Goddamn, how did this happen?” Jamere yelled. “Only black man around and I end up in a farmer’s field and get bitten by some
Children of the Corn
rejects.”

Mattie tried to calm Jamere down, but we all knew what the bite meant.

While we sat there unmoving in the bus, they surrounded us several ranks deep.

“
I’ll lead them away so you two can escape,” Jamere said.

“
No, Jamere!” Mattie screeched. “There has to be another way.”

Jamere chuckled as his blood dripped steadily onto the floor.

“
Sure, there’s another way,” he replied. “I stay here and eat you, and I don’t think you would like that type of oral gratification.”

Not waiting for an answer, Jamere racked a fresh round and fed several extra shells into the shotgun. He opened the back emergency door and with a running start he jumped, easily clearing him of the zombies. Rolling to his feet, Jamere paused to wave goodbye to us. Now visibly shaking from the virus, he blasted the two zombies closest to him and ran into the tall cornfield, in the process luring the rest away from our bus to the point that I was able to exit the field entirely. As I got the bus into drive, more shots rang out, followed by eerie silence. Before I could say anything comforting to Mattie, a single gunshot rang out from the direction Jamere had just run.

Knowing in our hearts Jamere had chosen to not become one of the infected, we vowed not to waste his sacrifice and left the school for home. Our spirits crashed as low as they had been yet. Our little raid, which started as almost a game, had cost us dearly. When we passed the Walgreens, Chris’s truck could be seen ahead in the distance. I heard Stephen on the radio, but wanted to deliver the bad news in person, so I didn’t say anything and just drove home in silence.