The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (9 page)

The boy and the dog raced toward the house,
even as the Loonies closed the gap. Jeremy charged up the front
porch of the house with the first of the creatures close on his
heels. He whipped open the screen door and tried the entry door,
the knob wouldn’t turn.

It was locked.

The dog launched itself off of the porch onto
the first of the Loonies to reach them, growling and snapping its
teeth tightly around the thin neck of a tall middle-aged man whose
matted beard gave him a piratical appearance. The Loony grabbed the
dog by a front leg and ripped the animal away, tossing it aside. A
chunk of the man’s neck tore out, still clasped tightly between the
dog’s powerful jaws, and the man collapsed to the ground in a
fountain of blood. Other Loonies converged on the dog as soon as it
struck the ground.

Jeremy pointed his gun at the group of
raving, mad creatures and unloaded the entire thirty-round magazine
into the horde before they could pile on the dog, which bounded out
and away from them. Close to a dozen Loonies dropped from the
gunfire, allowing him the breathing room he needed to jump off the
porch and dash around the side of the home while more of the
creatures leaped over their fallen comrades after him. He ran up
the back steps, virtually overcome with terror, and slammed the gun
into one of the window panes of the door. The glass shattered in a
spray of tinkling shards and he jammed his arm through the open
pane and quickly worked the deadbolt open. Slamming open the door,
he tumbled into the small mudroom while the dog leaped over him
deeper into the house. Scarcely before the first Loony reached the
entryway he kicked the open door hard, slamming it shut in the
creature’s face. He jumped up and instantly threw the bolt home.
Within seconds the rear door was jam-packed with Loonies, growling
and hissing. Two arms reached through the broken door window,
flailing wildly for whatever they could get their claws into. The
powder blue curtains were abruptly ripped free and disappeared out
the window. Bodies smashed into the door, jarring it on its
hinges.

Jeremy released the empty mag from his pistol
and jammed another in, slamming it home with the palm of his hand.
He let two more shots go through the open window pane and was
rewarded with screams of pain and an arm disappearing out the
window. He had maybe a dozen rounds left in the AR pistol’s
magazine. He stood and patted the dog on the head. For the first
time the dog allowed it. They seemed to now have forged a bond
under fire together. The dog was still growling in the back of its
throat as the mass of creatures piled up outside the back door. It
sounded like they were inside a bass drum with all the pounding and
clawing on the outside of the door and siding of the house. Another
window pane of the door exploded inward when a fist drove through
it. Jeremy let loose two more hastily fired rounds through the door
before backing further into the home and shutting tight a door that
separated the mudroom from the kitchen. The sound of the turmoil of
Loonies trying to get into the house was thankfully muted when he
closed the door. He jammed the back of a chair under the doorknob.
He had seen that done in movies and hoped it really worked.

“What now, dog?” he asked, absently stroking
the big shepherd’s head. “The Loonies will be busting in those
doors soon.”

The dog knowingly wagged its tail as it kept
its eyes fixed on the door. Something crashed on the other side of
the door, causing Jeremy to involuntarily jump. The dog started
barking loudly.

“Shhh!” he hushed the dog and backed further
into the home where it opened up into a dining area and living
room. Out the window he could see the yard about the house,
literally crawling with the creatures. There were hundreds of them.
He ran to the front door and peeked out a casement window. There
were still several Loonies meandering around the front porch and
lawn, or gathered around the bodies of their fallen comrades as if
waiting for them to rise again.

More crashing sounds reverberated through the
house from the direction of the mudroom.

“We got to get upstairs, dog. Quick!” He
raced around the living room to the carpeted stairs that led to the
upper level of the house, the dog quick on his heels. He sprinted
to the top of the stairs where he promptly sat down and laid out
his two handguns on the carpet next to him. He decided to leave on
his pack in case he needed to make a fast exit. He didn’t want to
leave any of his stuff behind, especially the GPS that had the
farm’s location programmed into it. He sat the last of the
magazines for the 9mm and .22 next to each handgun.

Maybe
I
can
kill
enough
of
them
to
block
the
stairway
, he hoped silently to himself.

He remembered watching a show on the History
Channel what seemed like a lifetime ago. It talked about what the
military and police called the ‘fatal funnel’. It was any hallway,
doorway, alley, passageway, or stairway that funneled an opposing
force so that only a few of them could go through at a time. He
remembered that a handful of defenders could hold off an army
indefinitely by causing mass casualties in the fatal funnel. The
battle of Thermopylae was an old example where King Leonidas and
his Spartans held off the much superior force of Xerxes’ Persian
Army at the ‘Hot Gates’ for several days. The King would have held
them off indefinitely if a local Greek hadn’t betrayed his
countryman and shown Xerxes a mountain path around the defending
force. Jeremy hoped that he could use the stairwell as a fatal
funnel and block up the stairway with their bodies. He knew that
they didn’t think like real people and the threat of pain and death
didn’t faze them; they would keep coming, and keep coming until he
was dead, or they were.

He was truly frightened, although without
realizing it, was funneling that fright into action. He recognized
the fear and also realized that it didn’t have to control him. It
was okay to admit to being afraid as long as you didn’t let the
fear paralyze your actions. He thought of his momma and papa and
would have traded a hundred dogs to be with them now. He looked
guiltily at the dog as it stood alert next to him, remembering how
it had jumped off the porch to take out the Loony before it could
reach him, probably saving his life.

“I’ll call you Jumper,” he said to the dog,
patting the scruff of its neck. The dog indicated its approval of
the new name and wagged its tail and licked Jeremy on the
cheek.

They heard another loud bang from somewhere
below, along with the sound of breaking glass.

“Uh oh,” Jeremy whispered, hefting the AR
pistol in his grip. “I think they’re in.”

Jumper made as if to lunge down the stairs,
however Jeremy closed his hand onto the fur of the dog’s neck,
holding him back. “You stay up here with me, Jumper,” he whispered
in the dog’s ear, his voice tight with fright. He blinked back
tears and pointed the pistol down the stairs, picking a spot on the
wall to aim where a picture of a smiling family standing next to a
lake hung.

That
could
have
been
my
family
, he thought wistfully.

It sounded like a herd of cattle were
stampeding through the house below him, and he guessed the chair
under the door trick didn’t work so well. Now it was time to put
away his fear and concentrate on staying alive.

The first Loony appeared at the bottom of the
stairwell, a young woman with filthy brown hair, clumped and
knotted down her back, still wearing the remains of a t-shirt and a
gold bracelet on her wrist that flared brightly as a ray of
sunlight coming in the front window caught it. Before he could take
the shot the Loony had moved away without looking up. Then a group
surged into view and this time one of them glanced up and let out a
guttural growl of rage when it spotted the boy sitting stoically on
the top stair. This time, without hesitation, Jeremy put a round
center mass, watching the puff of red sparkle in the sunlight as
the bullet tore out the back of the Loony and lodged into the chest
of another right behind it. Both dropped as if someone had cut the
strings holding them up. The overpowering blast of the rifle in the
small area caused Jumper to yelp in fright and spring backwards
away from the boy.

Jeremy rapidly moved the sight onto the next
target and fired again, continuing until the bolt held open,
signaling the magazine was empty. Below him a mound of Loonies lay
crumpled on the landing, some still squirming in their death
throes. More Loonies began agilely scampering over the bodies.
Jeremy picked up the XDM 9mm. He wasn’t quite as accurate with the
handgun, however, he took his time and made the shots count. The
mound of bodies swiftly grew below him. He calmly changed
magazines, the last for the 9mm; this was the smaller 13 round
magazine for the compact XDM. Then he would be down to the Mosquito
with its 10 rounds of .22 in its only magazine. He probably
wouldn’t have time to reload the .22.

He took careful aim at the next Loony as it
tried scrambling over the pile of shifting bodies. It was the
brown-haired woman with the bracelet. His first shot went wide and
hit her in the shoulder, shattering her clavicle. She let out a
keening scream as blood soaked her dirty tee shirt. Jeremy gazed
fixedly into her bloodshot eyes, seeing the animal madness and hate
burning in them, then the XDM’s glowing sight blocked out the eyes
and he squeezed the trigger. A puckered red hole appeared in her
forehead slightly above her right eyebrow and she collapsed on top
of the heap as two more Loonies scrambled to get over her.

Jumper began barking frantically in one of
the upstairs bedrooms behind Jeremy. He ignored the dog and sighted
in on the next Loony, an older man with thin gray hair to match a
thin gaunt face. Blood-tinged saliva dripped in long threads from
its liver-colored lips. Jeremy sent a round through its
brown-stained teeth and out the back of its neck and then
immediately shot a boy about his age that was crawling over the
pile beside the now dead man. The pile of dead Loonies was getting
bigger, still, he would run out of ammo before he could ever clog
up the stairwell completely. He felt sad that he would never get to
see his parents again or the family farm where he loved to still
play in the sandbox his papa had built there for him when he was a
little kid.

He really just wanted to be a little kid
again and not have to be scared so much. He didn’t want to die here
all by himself.

The dog continued to bark anxiously close by.
Through the ringing in his ears, Jeremy thought he could hear
another sound over the barking of Jumper and the screeching of the
Loonies.

A rumbling sound.

He fired two more shots at another male Loony
attempting to get over the slick, bloody pile of bodies, only
wounding it, but causing it to collapse backwards into the living
room.

Then from outside he heard the sweet sound of
a large-caliber automatic weapon. It pounded away in unrelenting
loud bursts of noise and was joined by the staccato reverberations
of smaller caliber weapons.

The rumbling sound grew louder and Jeremy
recognized the noise as some type of large diesel engine moving
about the house. Below, he watched the Loonies abandon their
attempts to get up the stairs as this new sound attracted them away
from his presence. His head swam. Was he saved? He stood and rushed
into the room where Jumper was excitedly jumping back and forth in
front of a window and barking crazily. The yard surrounding the
house was littered with dead or injured Loonies. At first Jeremy
couldn’t spot anything, then the sound of the diesel engine grew
louder and around the corner of the house stormed an eight wheeled
monstrosity painted in olive drab. Jeremy recognized it as a M1126
Stryker, the Army’s armored infantry carrier vehicle that usually
carried a crew of two and up to nine infantry soldiers. A fifty
caliber Browning M2 machine gun nestled in the remote weapons
station on the top deck amid imaging equipment spat out rounds of
fire while the giant tires of the vehicle crushed with bone
snapping force any of the Loonies unfortunate enough to be caught
between them and the ground. There were three people poking out of
the top of the military vehicle. Two men dressed in full ACU
camouflage, one with an M4 rifle and the other one wielding an M249
squad automatic weapon, both firing in short bursts as they
selected their targets which were rapidly dwindling around them. In
an adjacent rectangular hatch was a young blonde woman dressed in
regular civilian clothes and armed also with a full-auto M4 rifle
taking well aimed and placed shots from the moving vehicle.

“Yes!” Jeremy cried out in joy as the M2 cut
down a mass of Loonies that were chasing after the vehicle while it
plowed through any that were in its path. The smaller rifles took
out any Loony that got too close to their flanks.

“The cavalry has arrived!” he exclaimed
excitedly to Jumper, hugging the dog close to him.

Jeremy waited patiently for the action to die
down outside and when he heard the vehicle stop near the front of
the house with its engine idling, he gathered up his weapons,
called Jumper, and made his way down the stairs. When he reached
the bottom steps near the landing where the pile of bodies blocked
his way, he heard someone kick the front door sharply. The door
splintered and flew open, followed closely by two men with their
M4s shouldered. He heard them call ‘clear’ on the room as one
approached the pile of bleeding Loonies.

“Don’t shoot me! I’m not a Loony!” he called
out to them. The man on the other side of the mound of bodies
lowered his rifle.