Snareville II: Circles (6 page)

A block and half never seemed so long. It was like one of those dreams where you’re running like hell, but can’t get to where you’re going. Our boots pounded on the asphalt street. Footfalls sounded like cannons. The echo bounced against the buildings and blasted back into my ears. I glanced to the north where I saw the zeds go and sure as shit, they’d heard us and turned around. They brought buddies with them.

We slammed against the building, Cody turned, flicked a switch on the M-203 and launched a 40mm grenade down the street. The explosion blew windows out down the block and vaporized several zeds. I holstered my pistol, pulled the axe and opened the door. Glass shattered. I reached through and flipped the lock as Cody loosed hell again. Bill and Wally were halfway across the street. Wally opened up with his AK. In a combat crouch, he fired into the zeds at they came at us and advanced the whole time. They joined us in the doorway.

“So much for sneaky, eh Boss?” Bill asked.

“Hey, we almost made it,” I said. “Cody, you and Wally cover the door. This shouldn’t take long. Bill, come with me and help toss the place.” They nodded and went to work. Controlled fire can wreak havoc on a mass of deaders. One dropped after another as the high velocity rounds tore into them. For fun, Cody would drop a grenade in now and them. Downtown was quickly getting a coat of black zed juice for paint.

Bill and I dashed into the back of the store. It was dim, but there was enough light to read. We snagged a few items in passing, but what we needed would be behind the counter. A quick inventory of the shelves, I found what I wanted. I started to stuff bottles of antibiotics into my pockets, more into my magazine pouch. They were a tough commodity to come by and we weren’t able to manufacture them on a large scale yet. A pistol shot followed by a curse got my attention.

“They’re inside!” Bill shouted.

I looked up. Sure enough, there were three zeds coming from the back of the store. I drew my pistol, sent another soulless bastard to hell. “Thought you checked the place when we came in?”

Bill turned to me with a half-grin. “Sorry, Boss. I’ll be more thorough next time.”

Two more came from the back. We dropped them as well. I got the last bottle of what I wanted. I was pretty sure we couldn’t go out the front, as Cody and Wally still laid down some heavy fire. We couldn’t go out the back. We had to find an escape. We had to find it fast.

I glanced around the store. On the far north wall, two sets of stairs presented themselves. One obviously went to the basement, one led up. I refused to be trapped in a basement. I was not going to be a horror movie cliché.

“Bill!” I shouted. He followed me halfway across the floor. “Hold them here. We have to get upstairs.” He nodded as he dropped another one. I ran to the front of the store, slapped the guys on the shoulders, told them to fold in. They nodded, followed me back into the store. Cody could see the back door where they were flooding in. He signaled us down, turned and fired a grenade round at the frame.

The explosion ripped through the store, the back wall fell in. It wouldn’t stop them, but it’d slow them down. More flooded in from the front door. Didn’t realize they were so damned close. We poured rounds into the swarm as we backed toward the stairs. Then, they were too damned close for guns.

I fired the last round from my pistol, it locked open. A zed grabbed my arm and clamped down on my wrist. I heard myself scream and yank my arm away, dripping blood. The thing, it looked to be a girl about ten, grinned at me with half her face. She wore the slimy, tattered remains of a pink tee shirt; Princeton Little Poms stenciled on the front. She came at me again and I backhanded the pistol across her face. I heard the jaw break as her head snapped sideways.

Thought was out the window now. Pistol holstered, axe jumped to hand. Things went dark. “I…” the axe came down with a wet splat in her skull. She crumpled. I yanked the blade free…“FUCKIN’…” blade came down again. Her skull collapsed. I yanked it free, black blood and brain matter was slung across shelves. “HATE ZOMBIES…” Twice more the blade fell.

Bill grabbed my arm on the next swing. “She’s gone, Captain.” He punched a hole in a bottle of rubbing alcohol with his knife, poured the contents onto the wound in my wrist. My arm was wrapped in liquid fire. I heard myself scream. “How many times you been bit now, Boss?”

I ground my teeth as the pain ebbed. I looked around. This wave of zeds was down. Second string would be here any time. “Four,” I gasped. “Four times now.”

“One a these days they’re goin’ to get something vital.” Bill grinned. “We gotta go, Dan.”

I looked up. Through both doors now, more zeds shambled in. The four of us backed to the staircase. I changed magazines in my pistol, started again.

“Where do these go?” Wally shouted over the gunfire.

“Up,” I shouted back. “Don’t care where, as long as it ain’t here.”

Without us blocking the doors, the zeds really poured inside. This was nuts. They fell in piles, but kept coming. We were halfway up the stairs with nothing but a wall of zeds below us.

“Cody,” I shouted as I changed magazines. Damned pistol was too hot. I holstered it, switched guns. “Throw some Willy Peter down there against the doorframe in front.”

“Are you nuts? We’re in the kill zone.”

“Damnit, Corporal, so are they. Do what I tell you.”

“Yes sir, Captain.”

I heard the action of his gun open and close. I knew he was switching out rounds.

“Fire in the hole,” Cody shouted.

We all ducked as he launched the forty millimeter grenade of white phosphorus. The things were normally used for signals flares, but they did a hell of a job cooking zeds. The round streaked across the room and splattered against the doorframe. White fire filled the room. It burned anything it touched; set fire to everything else. Suddenly, the zeds had something else to worry about. They actually screamed, turned their attention from us and tried to find a way out.

I felt a wicked grin pull the corners of my mouth up. I turned from them and we rushed up the stairs. The door at the top was locked. A few shots from an AK destroyed the lock. We were in a storage area, full of boxes and inventory. We added more medicine to our take as we ran in. Smoke was already pouring up the steps. We didn’t have long. Worse than the smoke, the zeds started to follow our lead. First one, then three, then six stumbled in with us.

A door marked “Emergency Exit” caught my eye. I ran across the room, shoved the door open. It was a small staircase that went up maybe ten feet. My troops were right behind me. The door opened at the top and we were out on the roof. Smoke followed us. With no sprinkler systems working, hundred year old buildings go up pretty fast. Bill shoved a board through the door handle. For now, the zeds were trapped inside. I took time to wrap a bandanna around my wrist to stop the blood.

“Well, Captain, we did it, but I don’t think we’ve got long,” Wally said.

I looked around us. Smoke already poured into the air from the front of the building. It left a long black, greasy exclamation point in a clear, blue sky. We started to walk across the roofs, headed south. I could hear the zombies slam their bodies against the door. The board wouldn’t hold them long.

We got to the edge of the southernmost building, when I heard the wood snap. The door flung open, slammed against the frame. Several zeds tumbled out. Those last through on fire. They made it a few steps before they fell. Fingers twitched as the fire boiled their brains.

I heard Cody reload his 203. With a sharp crack, the grenade streaked across the rooftop. The explosion flattened the doorway. Flames shot up from the open hole, what few zeds made it to the roof with us were taken out by Wally and his AK. Fire spread to the buildings that flanked the pharmacy. The roofs sprouted black spots that soon sent fingers of flame into the sky.

Below us, the street was clear. I found the escape ladder bolted to the wall of the building and hoped that it was solid. Last thing I wanted to do was to fall and go splat when I just got away from a goodly sized swarm of zeds. On the ground, I peeked around the building. Heatwaves washed across the street, blistering the paint of the buildings on the other side. A half-dozen zombies stumbled away from the heat, what rags they wore smoldered on their bodies.

We turned and walked down the street. By my watch, we’d been gone an hour and a half. We had time to gather up the horses and make it back to where we left the girls before dark. If we didn’t run into anything else.

Chapter 6

They rode back out of town. Weary, spent, but they had to meet the girls before Jinks called Tom and asked for air support. They didn’t want to waste fuel if they could avoid it. Aviation fuel especially was valuable these days. Ella and Jinks had a half-tent strung between two trees, a small smokeless fire in front of them. The canvas trapped the heat and reflected it back down on them.

Dan rod up on them with his group, eased from the saddle. He stood for a moment as he leaned against Cherokee. Ella slid her arms around him.

“I need a scrunch, Dad,” she said as she hugged him. He returned the hug, held her tight. “I didn’t think you were coming back. We heard a lot of shots and explosions. Sounded like you were really giving them hell.”

“We did,” Dan said as Ella broke the embrace. She nodded north. “What’s burning?”

Cody slid his arm around Jinks’ waist as they walked into the little camp. “Downtown Prophetstown. Only way we could get out was to burn the place around them.”

“We can’t stay here,” Dan said as he handed a bottle of amoxicillin to Jinks. He rolled up his sleeve. Jinks looked at him, a question on her face. He nodded. She filled a syringe, shot him full of antibiotic. She switched needles, drew another dose and repeated the process with Cherry. “With that fire, those rotten bastards are going to be moving. We need to set up somewhere defensible.”

“There’s a barn off to the east a couple miles, from the look,” Wally said. “I saw it as we came over the rise.”

Dan nodded. They broke camp, packed the horses and moved over to a small wooden barn, now surrounded by prairie. Tall grasses brushed against their knees as they rode into the abandoned farmyard. Beside the wall of the barn were two skeletons. From what was left of the clothes, a man and a woman. Most of the skulls were gone from both. A rusted shotgun lay between them, the man’s hand wrapped around the stock.

Dan rolled the door to the barn open. For a brief moment, he thought about burying the bodies. Two people who had seen the end, took their own destiny in hand and didn’t allow themselves to become an abomination. Then he realized he had the living to worry about and led Cherokee in side. The rest of the group followed.

For the rest of the day and all of the next, the barn was base. They packed Cherry down into a bed of hay, covered her in blankets and at night, the girls all piled in together. They used the heat of their bodies to ward off the chill. Mentally, Dan marked the area to return to and scavenge as much hay as he could. This barn was nearly full, others in the area held more bales.

The second morning, after cold showers in the house and a fresh change of clothes, they headed back out on the trail. Bags on the pack saddles rattled with canned goods from the house. They weren’t on a gathering trip, but they couldn’t pass up a fully stocked pantry. There were jars of home canned vegetables as well, but they wouldn’t collect them until a crew came up for hay. The shotgun was left as well, as it had wintered over two years. A case of birdshot was found inside and added to the packs.

Late in the afternoon, they came to the sides of the Hennepin Canal. The old waterway had been a long, skinny, state park for many years. Barges stopped using it back in the 1950’s, but now it saw a lot of water travel again. With canoes, people could cut the trade route in half between the Quad Cities, where Tom was, and the Illinois River, where Dan was. Zeds couldn’t get at anyone and piracy was nil.

They were on the north bank of the canal. Dan turned his group east for less than a mile. A field bridge crossed the water and they went over to the south shore. From there, they followed the canal another mile until they came to a campground. It would be the last stop before home. They could have pushed on through the night, but didn’t like to move much when they couldn’t see in the dark and their enemy could. A good defensive position was the best solution and this campground had been fenced with tall chain-link fence. A gate with a combination lock on it kept out any zeds short of a large swarm.

Inside, wood was gathered as Cody started a small fire in one of the protected pits. The horses were unsaddled and tended to for the evening, then set to wander and graze inside the fence. The studs were picketed away from the others. They had room to graze, but not get tangled, or start a fight with the others. Supper for the people was a few MRE’s brought along from their supplies and a few fish caught in the canal, broiled over the coals.

After dark, they were joined by other travelers. A group of traders had come out of Snareville and Hennepin earlier in the day. Their canoes were filled with goods such as shirts and pants. A few dresses. Underwear. Things that were difficult to find or were made by the Mennonites at Plow Ridge had a great value. The canoes with their loads were brought inside the fence for the night.

Dan watched the traders set up camp. This was one of a few secure sites along the canal, but he’d heard stories of vicious fights over a canoe’s worth of food when some had camped in the open. He knew this bunch and after they settled in for the evening, he slipped out of his sleeping bag and joined them around their fire.

The group had traded with the survivors that tied their houseboats up at the Hennepin docks. Those survivors were always short of everything but fish. Scavenging parties visited up and down the Illinois River. What they found, they brought back to their base and traded up the canal. They did some trading on land, but anyone who wanted to trade with them then had to come down to the docks. These survivors refused to set foot on land unless they were scavenging. Dan found out there were a half-dozen new babies in the group and at least that many women pregnant.