Kirk Allmond - What Zombies Fear - A Father's Quest

Tearing across the field at the vehicles top speed, the wire ripped the soybean field to shreds. “Stop firing! Cease fire, cease fire” I yelled into the radio, as I whizzed along the leading edge of the horde of zombies.

The barbed wire caught one in the leg, wrapped around its leg and ripped it off. The wire, with the leg attached at the end, started bouncing up and down, catching the next zombie about chest level, and ripped him down the line. That zombie caught the one next to him, and my plan starts to take shape. I turned left up the road, wrapped the barbed wire around the horde of zombies, shredding them with the barbs. They weren’t dead, but were mostly immobile, and caused those behind them to stumble, further slowing the pile.

One of my lines snapped, rebounded and hit me on the back of the head. I could feel blood flowing down my neck, but I kept the throttle pegged as I made another left and headed down the back side of the zombies. They were getting squeezed together from three sides by the wire, except those that had been cut in half. I was close now, but running out of wire. I turned left around the forth side of the horde, heading for the point where I’d tangled the initial zombie. I rocketed past the mangled zombie, headed straight down the road, intending to cut them all in half with the wire. I reached the end of the wire, but instead of it cutting through them, it caught, stopping the four-wheeler.

I was thrown over the handle bars onto the road, where I skidded to a stop. My shirt was nearly ripped from my chest, and almost all the skin was removed from my right arm and side. I rolled around on the ground in agony for a moment, before standing up and surveying my handiwork. The zombies were effectively pinned. Marshall waded up to the ‘pen’ of zeds with a twenty-pound sledgehammer in each hand, my God he was strong.

He swung the hammers over and over; smashing zombie heads, several times literally exploding them like that stand up comic with the sledgehammer and fruit.

He was literally smashing them three and four at a time.

“Tookes, you alright mate?” John’s voice came over my radio, which was miraculously intact after my Superman impression. Flying wasn’t hard; it was the landings that sucked.

“Yeah, fine bro, I’m gonna feel that in the morning.”

“Tookes, you’re one crazy son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, I suppose I am.” I said. I looked around for Leo’s aura. She should have been back well before now. I finally saw it, faintly blue in the field behind the house. It was very dim, and that frightened me.

“Leo, where are you?” I asked into the radio.

“Leo! Come in.”

I was up and running now, my road rash almost healed. I kicked the fence post off the back of the four-wheeler, which took the mangled rack with it, started it up again and ripped off through the field towards her aura.

“John! Get everyone reloaded and ready for the next wave. Once you’re reloaded, advance up to the first ammo dump and meet there! I’m going for Leo.”

I flew off across the field, wishing this was a larger, faster model four-wheeler, but grateful for what I had. I took a bank of a small creek at full speed, flying several feet through the air, sailing over the creek-bed before landing on the other side. Standing up on the machine, scanning with normal vision for any sign of her, I happen on her trail. The long grass was flattened in swirls on either side of a trampled path in the middle. It must have been terrifically difficult to maintain any kind of speed in this thigh high grass.

Rocketing off down her trail, I switch to aura vision. Leo was just up ahead, I couldn’t see her in the tall grass, but her light directed me towards her. She was lying crumpled in the grass. I dove off the four-wheeler as soon as I got it stopped, and ran over to her. She was breathing, very slowly. I checked her quickly for broken bones, finding her left arm was hanging in a strange direction; her lower arm was definitely broken. I followed the trail back a few feet, and saw a rock; there was some blood on it. I gently lifted her head; there was a large wound on the back, bleeding.

“Oh God, no, no no no no.” I said aloud, as I ripped my tattered shirt off and pressed it under her head. She moaned a little bit when I moved her head. Pressing the shirt to the back of her head, I used my belt to secure it. While I had her head in my hand, I felt her neck, which appeared to my untrained hands to be in place. I rolled her over into my lap and brushed her hair out of her face. Her eyes opened, her pupils closed down with the last of the sunlight beaming down on her face.

I leaned down and kissed her softly on the mouth, then stood up with her in my arms and walked to the four-wheeler. I had to get her to the house; I put her on my lap, facing behind me, legs wrapped around my waist. I put her good arm around my neck, and positioned the broken arm between us, holding it in place as best I could.

I started up the four-wheeler and got it turned around, slowly making my way back to the house.

“John, what’s the status?”

“We’re holding them, we’re back at ammo dump two; we ran out at the first one. We’ve killed about a quarter of the zeds in this grouping. If Leo is right, and there’s another ten thousand coming after this wave, we’re not going to have enough ammo. The other fire teams are waiting, we’re almost out at this spot, and we’re going to retreat back to the property lines in a minute. I’d guess six thousand left in this group, but Tookes, that’s just a guess, I have no idea.”

“Do what you can and fall back. We have more firepower and more ammo for those 30/30s and Charlie’s other teams - if they can maintain trigger discipline, we’ve still got a chance.”

Bookbinder came over the radio “They’ll maintain the line, don’t worry, sir.”

When I got up to the main house, I carried Leo up the steps and put her on the table where she and my mother had patched up my gunshot.

“Mom, she’s got a pretty bad head wound, and a broken arm.”

“Roll her over on her stomach so I can get a look.” Said Mom, who grabbed one of the buckets she’d filled before we cut power to the well pump earlier that day. She grabbed a sponge and slowly removed my shirt ‘bandage’. Leo groaned, and fresh blood rolled down her neck. Mom emptied a sponge over the wound, probing inside with her fingers, looking for a break in the skull.

“Her pupils contracted when she opened her eyes after I found her, I don’t know how she doesn’t have a concussion, but maybe we’re just lucky.”

“Someone has a plan for Leo, and that plan doesn’t end today,” said Mom.

“I hope not, I have a plan for her, and I need her tonight. I can’t do this without her.”

She replaced my shirt with gauze from the first aid kit, wrapping it all the way around her head like a bandanna. “This will be fine, now let’s take a look at that arm.”

“Mom. It’s worse out there than we thought. There wasn’t just one group of zombies - there were three. That many zombies can’t be a coincidence. There’s got to be a super controlling them somewhere, I have to get back out there.”

“I know Vic; I’ve been listening to the radio. You and Marshall are smart boys, if anyone can get us through this, you two can.” She said as I turned to leave.

“I hope you’re right Mom, because I’m almost out of ideas.”

“Use your resources, Vic. Just like you always do, look around at what you have to work with, and you figure out how to get the job done with what you’ve got.”

I took off on the four-wheeler again; I’d have to remember to thank Bookbinder for it when I saw him. He was a great field commander, I was lucky to have him. When I reached the property line, I parked the quad and walked up to John, who was firing steadily, shot after shot; he’d switched to a 30/30, having exhausted all of our rounds. Zeds were advancing quickly, I didn’t see any choice.