Joseph Talluto - White Flag of the Dead

I hopped out of the car and got us set up. “Jason and Lisa, you watch the road and protect our exit. Chelsea and Kristen, you watch their backs and keep an eye on the cars. Kristen, Jake’s your responsibility unless I say otherwise. Tommy and Duncan, you’re to clear a path to the house. Charlie and Sarah, we’re cleaning up and going in. Any questions?” All heads shook negative. “Let’s go.”

I headed towards the house while Tommy and Duncan lit up the zombies headed towards us. It would have been scary to have bullets whipping past your head to take out a zombie in front of you if you hadn’t been through it before. I never slowed and reached the house in short order. The door had been caved in and I imagined there were several little sweeties waiting for us. Tommy and Duncan stayed out on the lawn, dropping the zombies that were coming from the other houses and covering our backs.

I moved in and aimed my gun left while Charlie slid in and went right. Sarah went in the middle and we all had targets. Eleven zombies of all shapes and sizes came shuffling from their various hiding places, and we had our hands full. I dropped the two closest ones to me, and Charlie’s rifle cracked loudly in the small space. Sarah’s rifle boomed once, and then again. We could hear loud moaning coming from all angles, so this was a heavily infested house. Great. The garden level of the house consisted of a central room, with hallways to the left and right. We were going to have to be careful, as more zombies started to come from the other rooms. We could wait for them to come to us, but there was a stairwell in the middle which made coverage difficult.

I motioned Sarah to the stairs and she took up a position to nail anything coming down. Charlie went right and I went left. I went to a bedroom door and checked the knob. It was locked. Good. No worries about something hitting me in the back. I moved down the hallway, the light fading as I moved away from the windows of the central room. It was quiet, and I could hear my own breathing as I moved slowly down the hall. God, I hated this. Give me a stand up battle every time. Hunting these bastards sucked. I moved down the hall and checked the last room. The door was open, and I pushed it further with my rifle barrel. It was empty.

I turned around and was confronted with the biggest zombie I had ever seen. He was six foot six if he was an inch, and was headed my way. His huge frame was dressed in torn sweats, and his face bore the marks of several confrontations. Dried blood covered his chin, and his lips curled back in a grimace as he moved towards me. I backed up and raised my rifle, but he brought up his hands to grab and knocked the barrel out of the way. I brought up the butt of the rifle as a barrier and shoved as hard as I could. I barely managed to slow him down, and he bore me backwards to the wall. His hands grabbed my shoulders and tried to bring me within biting range of his gaping maw. I pushed back and managed to keep myself from being bit, but I couldn’t let go of the rifle, as it was the only thing keeping the teeth from me. The zombie’s decaying face moaned into mine, and his graveyard breath made me gag. I pushed off the wall and we began a dance of death around the room. I couldn’t afford to go down, as he was too heavy, and I couldn’t draw my SIG as I needed two hands to keep this thing off me. I pushed it back into the bathroom in the room, and while I had the momentum, shoved it into the bathtub. The edge of the tub tripped the zombie and he fell with me on top. I used the opportunity to shove knee into his chest and rip away from him. I fell back and landed on the floor, with the zombie moving to get out of the tub. I shot it in the head from the ground, and nearly deafened myself from firing in such a small space. The zombie slowly sank into the tub, his big head coming to a rest on his big chest.

I took a moment to catch my breath and take stock of my injuries. My shoulders were going to be sore for a while, but I was alive, which was the important thing. I got up and headed back down the hallway. The locked door I had passed earlier was broken off its hinges, no surprise where Tiny had come from. I peeked in and didn’t see anyone else, so I went back to Sarah at the stairs. Outside, I could hear an occasional shot as Tommy and Duncan honed their shooting skills.

“You okay?” Sarah asked, keeping her gun on the stairs.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I said, rolling my head and shaking my shoulders a bit. “Had a big son of a buck give me a moment, there.”

Sarah shook her head. “I saw him head your way, but I couldn’t help out. Sorry.”

I understood. Sarah had her job and would do it, which was making sure we didn’t get jumped by anything coming down the stairs. The small pile of corpses at the first landing was evidence of that. “No worries. Just inconvenient.” I tried to make light of the fact that I nearly bought it. If it had been Sarah in there, the big Z would have easily overwhelmed her. Charlie came back from the other hall way, and I could see a zombie half in and half out of a back room.

“All clear?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Charlie said. “You?”

“Just a big bugger that gave me a good run.” I took a second look at the corpse in the hall. “Say, Charlie, is that your knife in his chest?” I inquired, smiling a little.

Charlie looked back at the body. “Uh, yeah, that’s mine. Not sure how it got there.” He wandered back to the zombie and pulled out his knife. Wiping it off, he came back to the stairs. Both Sarah and I were grinning at him. “What?”

Sarah broke the silence. “Did you miss his head?” she asked, giggling a little.

Charlie glowered. “He surprised me, okay? Sometimes when they’re fresh you forget they’re zombies.”

I laughed. “Guess this lets me off the hook for falling on my ass.”

Charlie refused to dignify me or Sarah with further comment.

I patted Sarah on the shoulder and brought my gun up to the ready position. I jumped to the landing, sliding a little on a spot of Z-goop, and aimed towards the top of the stairs. Charlie leapfrogged me and went to the top. Sarah jumped past him and I ran up to take a position on their left.

We had a minute to take in our surroundings before they came for us. The room was massive, with vaulted ceilings and a walkway on the second floor that opened out to the room. I could see some survivors up there, and reminded myself not to shoot too high. The kitchen was a mess, with tables and chairs thrown about the tile floor, and the hallways had blood smeared on the walls. A decomposing body was in the center of the room, and it was interesting that it had no head. I motioned to Sarah and she looked over.

“Great. Some idiot has a sword.” She was not amused.

I smiled inwardly. We had run into a guy a while back who insisted he was the greatest zombie killer in existence, and his weapons were two cheap samurai swords. He didn’t last long after he charged a group of five zombies by himself. We buried his swords with what was left of him.

I didn’t have much time to reminisce. There were about fifteen zombies in various states of decay that were coming for us. A small woman was immediately in front of me and she was almost able to grab my arm when I dropped her. Sarah had slung her rifle and was using her Ruger to drop zombies. Charlie fired three times and took out a set of twins and their grandmother. I moved to my left and killed two more, an old man and young boy. I was moving towards the kitchen, clearing a path. I shot my last one and turned to see Sarah finishing off hers and Charlie using his tomahawk to take out a zombie that was crawling out from under the table where it had been feeding on what looked like a small dog or cat.

“Clear.” I said.