The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Weight (36 page)

Falling back as his hand dropped to the .45 holstered at his hip, Brain
already knew it was hopeless. He resigned himself to the fact that he would have to take the bite and then kill the dead thing before turning the weapon on himself. He pulled his pistol and had it half way up when the Z’s mouth was only inches from his face.

To his surprise, an arm
zoomed in from his right, coming between the gapping maw heading toward him and the fragile flesh of his face. The Z latched onto it for a few seconds and shook its head like a dog worrying a bone before its head exploded in a spray of black skull and brains.

His ears still ringing from the dynamite blast
and the pistol being fired only inches from his head, he barely heard Tick-Tick say, “I got him, Pork Chop, now get up and haul ass.”

Looking at his friend, he said in horror, “You got bit
!”

Tick-Tock
fired his pistol at the few Z’s who had managed to get to their feet then pulled back the sleeve of his shirt revealing the chainmail that covered his arm. “Always use protection,” he said with a laugh as he grabbed his friend’s hand and hoisted him to his feet.

Brain’s first thought
when he looked at the gate was to try and close it. He changed his mind when he saw the hundreds of dead who had already come through it getting to their feet and heading his way. Instead, he turned and ran for the mansion.

***

Heather dragged Mary by the collar up the stairs and into the house before lifting her onto a couch near the entryway. She ran back and ushered Igor, Linda, Denise and Cindy through the door then turned her attention to the living, and the dead. She could see Tick-Tock and Brain running toward her with a large group of them on their heels. Standing on the porch, she was at a raised elevation that let her lay down covering fire over their heads as her friends sprinted for safety. After emptying the magazine on her CAR-15, she switched it out and looked for the rest of their people. She could see Steve pulling the last of the others from the minivan and shoving them in her direction before he turned to yell for Pep. The dog was going crazy as she raced around and snarled at the dead.

Connie appeared next to her with a rifle in her hands and started firing at the Z
’s still flooding through the gate. Heather could see it was no use trying to stem the flow and yelled at her to focus on the dead that were heading toward Steve. In a blur, Tick-Tock and Brain raced up the steps and slid to a stop before they turned and began firing at the walking corpses coming up behind them. Heather saw that Steve had finally managed to grab Pep by the collar and was pulling her with him as he headed for the door. The dead that had been after Tick-Tock and Brain now turned their attention to him, so she called out for everyone to lay down covering fire. Raising her rifle, she emptied two magazines in the time it took him to reach the stairs that led up to the porch.

“Inside,” Steve yelled as he dragged
the twisting and snarling dog through the door.

Risking one last look to see if they could somehow salvage the situation and regain the compound, Heather took in the hundreds of dead that had flooded through the gate and were
now coming at her in a loping run. Beyond them were even more.

It was
utterly hopeless.

The closest
of the dead were only feet from the porch of the mansion when she slammed the door shut and locked it behind her. Tick-Tock and Steve half pushed her out of the way as they slapped wooden planks over their only weak point and started nailing them in place. With the storm panels in place all around the first floor, their only light came from the flashlights held by Connie and Denise.

The sound of dozens of dead bodies hitting the door and clawing at it
as they whined and screeched drowned out the screams of the others as the last of them raced up the stairs. Made of solid oak, the entry didn’t even bend against the onslaught of Z’s.

Heather handed Steve the last 2x4 and watched as he hammered it in place.

Taking a step back to observe his work, he said, “If that doesn’t hold them, nothing will.”

The door had a variety of 2x4s and 2x6s covering it in a solid
screen from the floor to the top of the jamb. Tick-Tock was still pounding in nails as he sought out any weak areas while Denise stood back and pointed them out to him with her light.

Now that they were secure
, Steve turned his attention to Mary and rushed to where she was laid out on the couch. He found Grimm bending over her and asked, “How bad?”

“Bad,” was
her only reply.

Unable
to access Mary’s condition in the dim light, Steve called for Connie to bring her flashlight. He hoped it wasn’t as bad as it looked but his heart dropped when he saw the damage that Sean’s bullet had done.

Blood had soaked into the couch and spread out in a large stain from the exit wound in her back.
It ran over the cushions then dripped onto the floor. The front of Mary’s shirt was covered in red and he could see that her breathing was labored. A large black mark with a hole in the middle was visible where the muzzle flash had scorched it when the bullet was fired into her. He saw a small pulse of blood surge out with every beat of her heart.

Not having a clue on how to deal with something like this, Steve took a step back as he ran his hands through his hair. Mary needed a surgeon and a hospital or she would die.
Weakness flooded his body at his inability to do anything and his knees felt shaky at the knowledge that she was as good as dead.

Pulling himself together, he knew he had to do something no matter how futile it was.

He turned to Grimm, saying urgently, “I need knives, small knives. They have to be sharp. I also need a needle and thread and a turkey-baster. Get everything and boil it in water.” To Heather, he called out, “And I need bandages and gauze from the medical kit. Bring me some scissors too.”

No one moved
, so Steve barked out, “NOW.”

As they ran to do his bidding, f
rom behind him he heard Connie ask, “Can you save her?”

Steve could only shake his head as he rolled Mary onto her side and looked at the exit wound. Seeing
that the bullet had missed her spine, he hoped for the best when Heather returned with a small first aid kit. After cutting off Mary’s shirt, he pressed a gauze pad against the ragged hole in her back. Thankful that she was unconscious, he taped the bandage in place before shaking the blood off his hands and rolling her onto her back.

The lights turned on as the generator
sent a surge of electricity through the wires, which let him know that Grimm had fired it up to get the stove going in order to boil his makeshift surgical tools. Steve called out that he needed light and ordered that all the lamps be brought over and their shades taken off.

The noise of the dead pounding and clawing at the storm panels distracted him for a moment, and he
shouted for Tick-Tock to get up on the roof and give him an assessment of their position. Denise told him that he’d already gone to do that, so Steve turned his attention back to Mary.

From the
slight rise and fall of her chest, he could see that she was still alive. His only question was for how long. He had no idea what he was going to do beyond trying to open the wound and sew up any major blood vessels that were bleeding. Beyond that, he was completely clueless. His stomach sank as he remembered all the different medical shows he’d seen and books he’d read. In all of them, they had blood pressure cuffs, respirators, suction and anesthesia. He asked himself what he would do if she came to in the middle of the operation and had no answer.

As he looked back
down at Mary, he was suddenly saddened and yet relieved to see that her mouth hung open, and her eyes were glazed over in death. He thought about doing CPR, but decided against it. In reality, he knew that she was through the minute the bullet had pierced her skin. What would be the sense in reviving her only to have her die later, maybe even conscious and in pain?

S
teve reached for an afghan that was spread across the back of the couch. He pulled it down, shook it out, and used it to cover her body.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Happy Hallow Insane Asylum:

Steve hear
d the hissing and whining of the dead even before he climbed through the ceiling of the radio room and into the attic space. The noise seemed to dig through to the center of his brain like a diseased worm as he hoisted himself through the roof hatch. It caused him to shake his head, trying to rid it of the buzzing it produced in his ears. He looked over at Tick-Tock sitting on the ridge of the roof, sighting in on something with his rifle, the sudden report of the weapon made him jump.

Tick-Tock l
owered his M4 to switch out magazines and saw him. “How’s Mary?” He asked.

Steve
didn’t expect to see the sadness that crossed his friend’s face when he said, “She didn’t make it.”

Lowering his head
and shaking it back and forth, Tick-Tock muttered, “Too bad, she was finally stepping up.”

Not
wanting his failure to save Mary show on his face, Steve turned and carefully made his way to the edge of the roof.

Tick-Tock
was too receptive of what his friend was going through to miss this and said, “You did everything you could. Don’t let it eat at you.”

Ignoring this, Steve looked down and did a double take at the number of dead
that were clustered against the east wall of the mansion. Mary’s death was pushed from his mind at the sight of hundreds of Z’s clawing at the side of the house.

He t
urned to Tick-Tock and asked, “Is it like this all around us?”

Tick-Tock stood and said, “As
Chesty Puller once told his men, ‘We're surrounded - that simplifies our problem’.”

“Completely surrounded?” Steve asked.

“It’s worse on the south side,” he replied. “That’s where they hit us first, so they’re kind of bunched up there. Give them some time and I’m sure they’ll spread out.”

Steve spent
a few minutes counting heads then stopped when he hit over three hundred and said, “We should be able to take them out. We get everyone up here that can shoot and fire down on the ones on the south side until we’ve thinned them out. At least it’ll be easier to make head shots from up here. We can clear them from around the cars and then make a break for it.”

He
backed away from the edge of the roof and focused on the horizon to look beyond the gruesome sight below him. He was about to add that they should get someone to attract as many of the dead to the opposite side of the house before they ran for it when his words suddenly died in his throat.

Tick-Tock followed his gaze to where
the dust cloud being kicked up by tens of thousands of dead feet was moving in their direction.

Watch for:

DEAD END; The final book of The Dead Series