Total Apoc Trilogy (Book 2): Fighting the Hordes (2 page)

            Zombies were dying in droves, torn apart by the vicious machinegun fire from the towers.  But they were starting to fall across the coils of barbed wire, pushing it down and burying it under countless bodies.  Soon the walkers behind them would have unimpeded access to the fence.

            "You realize that this is the worst section of fence, right?" Olivia said.  "It's already been knocked down twice just since we've been here."

            I cringed to think about it.  We were fighting in the center both times it came crashing down.  Seven guys were bitten and infected the first time, forcing our guards to shoot them dead.  Sixteen men were bitten and put down by the guards the second time the fence was knocked down.

            A great wail rose up from the horde.  They didn't cry out often, but when they did it was dreadful.  My breath caught when they surged forward.  They were coming straight at us, trampling their fallen into the mud.  When the horde hit the fence it leaned towards us.  The defenders surged forward, trying to push it back up.  At the same time, we had to avoid our hands being bitten by a zombie.

           
Ratta-tat-tat-tat!

            "Aaaiieee!" a man screamed, hit by friendly fire.

            Five of our own dropped dead.  The tower guards were never very careful.  Godless bastards.  The friendly fire had the worst possible effect, since everyone rushed back to safety.  The zombies surged again and the fence came down with a crash and trapping five men under it.

            "Holy crap!" I cried.

            Zombies were upon us in a flash.  Two towers started shooting down into the melee.  They were killing as many defenders as zombies.  Before I knew it Olivia, Ralph, and I were cut off from the others, backs against the river.

            "Into the water!" I cried.

            We waded out waist deep, and the zombies stood on shore and stared at us hungrily.  I threw my spear and impaled one of them.

            "Time to go," I said, lowering myself until only my head was visible.

            Ralph and Olivia looked at me in terror, then up at the towers, and finally at the zombies.  They threw their spears, and followed me out into the dark, cold water.  The current was pretty bad, too.  The thought that we'd drown before reaching the other side occurred to me.

Chapter 2

            I swam out to the end of the NML Zone, to the corner of the back fence keeping us out of Emory proper, and then carefully felt for the razor wire coiled on top of it.  It was already too dark to see under the water.  We knew about where the submerged fence was, so swam over it nervously.

            "They are going to shoot us dead any second now," Olivia panted.

            I glanced up at the tower above us.  No one was looking down at us.  Did they even notice us enter the water?  Of course, with the breach they had bigger worries than three escaping geeks.

            "Better shot dead than slaughtered by zombies," Ralph replied.

            I agreed with Ralph.  The NML Zone was just a slow, horrible death.  They barely fed us twice a day.  All we were allowed to wear was those thin, worthless jail jumpsuits.  I couldn't remember when the last time I got more than three or four hours of uninterrupted sleep.

            "Escape!" someone shouted high above us.

            Bullets hit the water all around and between us.  We submerged and took off.  Panic allowed me to stay under longer than I thought possible.  Underwater I had no sense of Ralph or Olivia swimming beside me.  I felt utterly alone, while bullets zipped through the water around me.  When I came up for breath, Olivia was loudly sucking in air to my right rear and Ralph was rolling forward to go back under a few feet ahead of me.

            "They stopped shooting," Olivia said just before I went back under.

            I paused to tread water a moment.  No one shot at us.  Was it because they couldn't see us in the dark?  More likely they were too besieged by the zombie attack.

            "Follow me," I said and took off swimming as fast as I could.  "They'll send someone after us."

            There was a fifty foot clear strip of land between the inner enclosure fence and the town.  The five watchtowers were evenly spaced and butted up against the fence.  Men with makeshift spears, crossbows, and other low tech weaponry rushed up to the inner fence to fend off the zombies inside the enclosure.  I got a little pleasure seeing the citizens of Emory actually forced to fight.

            I swam closer to shore once past the open area and we caught up to Ralph.  The shore was lined with a concrete retaining wall.  Businesses hugged the shore.  I heard voices coming from somewhere in the dark shadows between buildings, but they spoke too softly to make out their words.

            Ralph and Olivia made for the shore.  I stopped them.

            "They'll expect us to get out to the water," I said.  "We should stay in the river."

            We had a heated little argument about whether being able to move faster on land or better hidden in the water was best.  It took some convincing on my part, especially since the water was so cold.  I think the prospect of armed men hunting us won the argument.

            "What's your plan?" Ralph asked.

            I heard voices on shore.  They sounded too close for comfort.

            "Shhhh," I replied.

            Emory's river shore was lined with piers jutting out from the retaining wall, and a few launch ramps.  Before the end of the world as we knew it happened, the people of that town had a thriving sports fishing industry.  Lots of people came to go fishing.  There were restaurants that boaters could float up to, bait shops, and marinas to fuel boats.  Everything a recreational boater or fisherman could ask for was accessible from the water.

            And, most importantly, I'd seen boats tied to the docks when we were brought into the town.  There weren't any boats visible from our location, but I was confident we'd find one.

            We swam under the bridge.  It was the longer of the two bridges, arching above the Culleoka River.  That river was navigable well past Emory, and it eventually emptied into the Mississippi.

            They were in full battle mode on the bridge, too.  It looked like the hordes were coordinating their attacks.  The zombies seemed to have some kind of telepathy.  When we were captured and forced into Emory, I'd hoped they would tell us more about what happened during the war, but they just stripped us naked, interrogated us in that condition, before tossing us in the NML Zone.  I didn't learn a thing about what made the zombies tick.

            Gas generators were started behind us along the NML Zone and on the bridge above us to power their flood lights.  After the nuclear exchange and EMP that was the only way to get electricity.  God only knew when and if society would pull itself back together and start fixing the damaged infrastructure.

            "Kyle.  Tell us where we're going," Olivia insisted in a whisper.

            "To find a boat," I said.  "With an outboard motor."

            It'd be nice if we could find some food, dry clothes, and weapons, too.  But I was a realist.  Just a running boat with a full gas tank would be enough to ensure our escape.

            We went from pier to pier checking all of the boats tied to them.  We found john boats, bass boats, and ski boats, but none of them had a gas tank.  Gas was probably a rationed item in Emory, and probably reserved for their generators.  I noticed there wasn't a single light in the town except for the three battle zones.

            I gathered us together under a pier.

            "If we don't find a boat with a gas tank in the next couple of piers, I think we should just take a john boat and paddle."

            "Okay.  I'm good with that," Olivia said.  "Starting a motor would probably just get them after us anyway."

            "As long as we do it before someone figures out we're missing," Ralph said.  "Also, we can break into one of these dockside restaurants and get some real food.  Maybe even some dry clothes."

            "Clothes in a restaurant?" Olivia asked.

            "Cook uniforms," he said, shrugging.  "Don’t the restaurants provide them on site?"

            Dry clothes would be nice.  Food would be even better, but I didn't want to take any chances.  We needed to find a boat and get the hell out of Dodge.  Zombies didn't care about clothes or canned food.  Zombies only ate what they killed, whether animal or human.  So we could worry about food and clothes later and maybe loot a house along the river. 

            "At least shoes," Olivia said.  "I can't walk a hundred miles home barefooted."

            I was pretty sure Plano was a couple hundred miles from Emory.  My father was from a small town an hour east of Emory.  We visited out grandparents often when I was young, but I couldn't remember exactly how many hours it took to drive there.

            "Actually," I said.  I stopped myself.  Nothing gained by correcting her.  "The river that runs north of Plano empties into this one, so we can take a flat-bottom john boat almost all the way home."

            Since zombies avoid entering water for any reason, that would ensure our safety during the trip.  That would be a nice change.  I hadn't felt safe in the two weeks since Z Day, as we called it.

            "Oh my god, you're so smart," Olivia said.  "I could kiss you."

            "This is no time for self control, woman," I said, wagging my brows.  She just laughed.  Dammit.  Then I heard footsteps on the docks.  "Shhhh."

            "Zeke.  Did you hear a laugh?" a man on shore said.

            "Escapees aren’t going to be laughing," another man said.

            My blood ran cold.  They were already looking for us.  I'd hoped the attacking hordes would keep them occupied until we escaped the town.

            We each hugged a piling under that dock and lowered ourselves as deep as possible.  I hoped being in the dark shadows would be enough.  After a moment I spotted four armed men walking down the docks and coming our way.  It looked like a patrol, and they looked alert.  The rain and darkness kept me from getting a good look at their weapons, but it appeared they only had shotguns.

            "Sounded like it came from over here," the first man said.  He was the one in the lead.  "It was a girl laughing, and one of the escapees is a girl."

            They walked out on the pier above us, their footsteps loud in my ears.  But not as loud as my heart.  I hugged that piling and prayed.

            The gunfire and shouting came to an abrupt stop on the north side.  The patrol stopped and looked back.  The generators were turned off, plunging everything back into darkness over there.  That meant the zombies had been pushed back, the fence propped back up, and now the zombies had decided to feed on the dead.

            My stomach soured as I recalled all of the previous times the zombies went into a feeding frenzy on their own dead.  It would probably take them hours to get all of the dead and dying out of the barbed wire, but they wouldn't leave a single body uneaten.

            I never wanted to see anything like that again.

            "Come on," a voice above said.  "Conner's gonna kick our asses if those bastards get away."

            "I'm going to fuck them up good," another said.  "I hope Connor makes an example out of them, too."

            Why was he so angry?  We were the ones being used and abused in the NML Zone.

            "Connor said he was going to hang the first guy who managed to get out of the buffer," another said.  "I guess he's gonna have three to string up."

            I looked at Ralph.  His eyes were huge.  I couldn't see Olivia's face from my location, but she was probably just as frightened.  They had me shaking, feelings of doom beating me down.

            The patrol continued on after a few minutes, and then I tried to relax.  Panic didn't want to let go.  With the fight over, they would do a roll call to determine who was lost.  If they hadn't seen us escaping, they would've looked for our bodies first.  They might've decided the zombies dragged our carcasses away to eat, but they might do a search on the off-chance we escaped.  It was a whole nother game since they knew we were out there, so we had to quickly find a boat and get away.  Time was running out.

            Three piers down was a marina.  The small store was dark, with the door wide open.  We found half a dozen john boats with small outboard motors.  All had oars and at least two life-preservers.  No weapons of any kind, and no gas tanks.  We decided it was time to just take one and go.

            I used the motor to step on and climb out of the water and into the boat while Ralph and Olivia counter-balanced by hanging onto the bow.  Then I helped first Olivia, and then Ralph get in.  I stayed in the rear, with Ralph taking the bow.

            "Untie us, Ralph.  The heavy rain will help hide us," I whispered.  "We'll push off, lay in the bottom, and hope if anyone sees the boat they will think it is drifting from upriver and just let it go."

            He rose up to untie the line, and paused.  I tensed, looking around for danger.  Olivia perked up, too, eyes huge.  Then he looked back at me and grinned.

            "I see gas tanks," he whispered.

            I stood up and looked in the direction he pointed.  There they were.  A dozen red marine fuel tanks for outboard motors lined up along the front of the store.  There wasn't anyone in sight and gas for the motor was too enticing.

            "Olivia, hold the boat in place.  We're going to get a few tanks real quick," I said.

            A dog barked and a man shouted in the middle distance as soon as I crawled up on the wooden pier.  Ralph and I froze.  I looked up and down the docks, but didn't see anyone or any movement.