Joseph Talluto - White Flag of the Dead

“Hi there. How are you all holding up?” I asked.

“People are pretty excited, I have to say. They figured they were going to die up here either through starvation or suicide.” The voice said.

I could understand that. Tommy and I had talked about such things as well. “Can you hang out for a little while longer?” I was curious about our time schedule. If we could wait until it rained, that would be so much better for trying to move a large group of people without attracting so much attention. My plans were shifting away from hiding, but even I knew when to cut and run. We could be running into thousands of zombies, we just had no way of knowing.

“We can hold out for about a week, then things will get ugly.”

“Understood. Listen, we think we can get you out and moving, but it’s going to take some coordination.” I outlined the basics of the plan, and heard some exclamations from the other end as the voice responded.

“We don’t have much choice, do we?”

I waited a second before responding. “I’m not going to lie to you. We’re going to have a running fight the second we get this going. If you don’t want to go through with it, that’s your choice. We’ll leave the door open to the gas station and you can try to get your food from here after we leave. But we are going. You need to decide if you are staying.”

The radio was quiet. I could almost hear the arguments going on. Then the voice came back on. “Okay. We’re with you. What do you want us to do?”

I spoke for about fifteen minutes, and then signed off. They had promised to be ready whenever we were, and we had no real idea when we were going to go. I was hoping for rain within the time frame, but the best laid plans always seem to go wayward, as I had already seen.

I fed Jake and then spoke with Tommy and Duncan about being ready to move as soon as possible. They had already been to their car, and managed to get most of their essential gear, as well as the rest of the ammo, back into the gas station. They had also moved the dumpster right next to building as needed.

Duncan had found some duffle bags in the back room, and he and Tommy both filled two of them with gear. I still intended to move with the bike and trailer, so I was good. I looked around the store and selected a few items I thought might be useful, but for the most part, a lot of the stuff was useless. I saw some magazines near the front, so I wandered up that way. I looked over the selection, and picked up two of them that looked interesting. A gun magazine and a news magazine. Both were a month old.

I stood up and looked straight into the eyes of a zombie. One of the posters had fallen, and I hadn’t noticed it until I had stood in front of the store. The zombie looked at me, then opened its mouth and moaned loudly. It was a nasty one, with no shirt and huge tears in its flesh. Its skin was stretched over its skull and bared teeth snapped at me as I stepped back, my hand going for my SIG, then the zombie smashed his head into the glass. The window held, but a crack formed and grew longer as the zombie moaned again and struck the glass with its fist. Behind it, I could see more zombies coming over to investigate.

Crap. Well, we needed to go, why not now? I bolted back to the back room and grabbed Jake, getting him in the seat of the bike and giving him a toy to play with. I put some hearing protection in his ears, as it was about to get very loud.

“Duncan, Tommy! We got company! We gotta start the plan NOW!” I yelled

Duncan didn’t hesitate, he grabbed his rifle and extra magazines and headed to the roof. Tommy came running out of the back area and grabbed up the radio and hollered for them to get moving, we’re bugging out.

I grabbed my carbine and an extra magazine and headed back for the front. The zombie who had been pounding on the window had broken a large portion out of it, and was starting to climb through, like a big greasy worm. I raised my gun and blew his head in half, shifting my aim immediately to the zombie behind him. I shot that one down as well, and saw many others begin walking my way. I cleared away another one, then heard Duncan open up on the roof. It was gratifying to see several of the shuffling dead go down for good, head shots taking the unlife out of them. I shot another one that was close to the front, too close for Duncan to see. It was a young boy, likely no older than twelve, with a hideous neck wound. Black fluid leaked out of the big vein in his neck, and he dropped with a coughing moan.

Tommy was not sitting idle. He went out the back door and shot two zombies that had been around the side, out of sight of the roof and front. He dashed back inside for his and Duncan’s duffle bags and brought them outside.

Two minutes into the fight I heard a crashing fusillade of shots, and then another. I smiled grimly to myself. Looks like the squatters are rebelling against the landlords, I thought. I looked out into the street and saw that Duncan had done his job well. He had waited until the zombies had reached his ‘killing zone’, then proceeded to drop them systematically. Thirty corpses were stacked on each other in a wide semicircle like a grotesque fence. Damn fine shooting.

I heard Duncan jump off the roof onto the dumpster, then push it over to the fence for the wave of people we were sure to have. I pushed the bike and trailer out of the gas station, and checked on Jakey. He was fussing and his bottom lip was out, indicating he was about to cry, he started squirming a little and wanting to get rolling, but I needed to make sure we had everybody first. I pushed the bike out to the center of the station and looked around. Down the street towards the west was a lot of movement, and we were going to be in serious trouble in about ten minutes.

People were starting to stream over the fence. They had backpacks and duffle bags, some were even carrying garbage bags of stuff. I pointed at the gas station’s back door. “You have two minutes. Grab what you can then get out here.” I wasn’t going to let anything go to waste if these people needed it. Tommy and Duncan were helping people over the fence, and protecting their rear. Several zombies had come for the noise and more than once I heard the crack of their rifles.

I rolled to the street and scanned the road. God, there was a lot of zombies to the west. We had no choice but to run south and hope for the best. I checked the north road and saw several zombies coming out of the subdivisions. I shot one that was getting too close, and added to the fence Duncan had created. We needed to move.

I looked back and saw Tommy and Duncan running towards me, their duffle bags banging around their hips. They were followed by a crowd of people, ranging in age from one to fifty years old. I got on my bike and rode ahead, figuring with my mobility I would act as scout. We headed south on Oak Lawn Avenue, passing by several burnt-out homes and businesses. I made a brief stop at a small gun shop on the way, but found it to be looted of guns and ammo. I did find two crossbows and a bunch of bolts, so I passed those out to two men who did not have guns.

The group had organized themselves well, with those who had firearms on the outside, protecting those on the inside who were unarmed. There were about ten children on the inside, corralled by their mothers and older children. Tommy and Duncan led the way, and I rode point.

Behind us, the dead followed. We were able to keep ahead of them simply by walking, but if we got delayed, we were going to be in trouble. I hoped to hell we would be alright. I was trying to make it to the junior high school at the end of the road, figuring it would make a great place to make a stand and regroup.

It wasn’t until we had gone about a mile when we hit trouble. I was coming out of a side street and heading down the main road when three men stepped out of a building and blocked the road. I was so busy looking for zombies I didn’t notice them until I was on top of them.