Timothy Long - Beyond the Barriers

A scream from ahead drew my attention toward the end of the road. There were a couple of zombies headed in our direction. A loud moan filled the air and lifted the hair on the back of my neck. I looked down at the ghoul, and his eyes were open and glowing.

“Are you doing that?” I wondered how intelligent he was.

“You will die,” he hissed in a burst of foul breath that made me want to turn aside and throw up.

I looked back, and there were more of them. They were filling the street, heading in our direction. I considered the ghoul—this man that used to be human but was now some sort of monster. Who was I to become judge, jury, and executioner?

“Call them off or I’ll blow your brains all over the road. You want to die?” Pulling my handgun, I pressed the barrel to his head.

“I’m already dead … just like you. You just don’t … know … it.”

His speech pattern was a mess. He could only choke out a few words before wheezing.

“Fuck! How do you do it? How do you call and control them?”

“Why are you still... among the living?”

White rage filled my vision. It tore across my eyes and filled them with hatred for this thing. He was human once, like me, like all of us, but he had no humanity left. He was worse than an animal. He was a demon that needed to be put down.

I was holding his collar as I kept his head off the ground. Dropping him, I stood and blew his head open with a pair of rounds that turned the concrete red and gray, like a bowl of putrid spaghetti had been spilled.

More moans filled the air. I did a full turn as I took in the hordes that were closing in on us. I saw five or six coming in every direction, with more behind them. A shambling army of rotted dead that walked like living men and women. Their cries and snarls filled me with more rage. This was not supposed to happen!

“Call everyone back!” Lisa yelled.

A pulsing sound ripped through the air, like they had routed a semi’s air horn into an air raid siren. Houses opened on all sides, and people came streaming out and into the street. They were strapping on clothes, packs, guns—it was a perfect example of organized chaos. There must have been thirty people, which would put the population of the enclave at something like seventy. Would it be enough?

Scott grabbed my arm and tugged at me. I stared at the ghoul on the ground as the light left its eyes. The body didn’t even twitch; it just lay listless like it had been on a morgue table for days.

The rage washed over me, but I used it rather than let it take over. I had met men who would go blind with rage in the heat of battle and make mistakes. Blind anger was a powerful tool, but it could lead to mistakes. There would be no mistakes. I was going to mold the rage.

Forcing down the adrenaline shakes, I took a deep breath, then another, before focusing on the zombies coming at us. Men and women with horrible wounds that no longer bled. Strips of flesh hung over rotted clothing as they came after us.

Lifting the rifle, I stared down the iron sights at a man dressed in a suit. His tie was still pulled up tight, but most of his shirt was missing. I put one in his forehead, and he fell back without a sound.

I walked as I shot, my gaze sweeping with the end of the gun as though the weapon were some sort of strange eyewear that allowed me to see the dead. And when I saw them, I dropped them. I fired fast, exhaling as I squeezed the trigger. Most fell with one shot, but some took two.

A voice called to me, then two, but I ignored them and fired. The voice in my mind was counting, and when I ran dry, I was already reaching for my back pocket for another magazine. The old one went into my waistband, and the other was slapped home without a look. My gaze never left the things coming after me.

They snarled and groaned as they moved in on me. There were no tactics; all they cared about was getting a piece of my flesh. I was probably fifteen or twenty feet from the barrier when other shots started to fill the air. Bullets buzzed past—angry wasps that tore holes in the air and passed with a brutal blaze through the zombies.

A group of three left the safety of a bunch of overgrown rhododendrons when they saw me. I spun to my right and coolly dropped two of them. The third one was too close for a shot, so I stepped forward and snapped my foot up in a front kick to the thing’s chest. The kick was cool and coordinated; I exhaled as I struck, and every muscle in my body tightened on impact. The blow was horrendous, and I felt ribs snap under the kick, but the zombie merely fell onto its back and, after a couple of seconds, started struggling to its feet. I turned and dropped a pair that had gotten too close, and when I spun around to kill the one that I had kicked, a bullet ripped from my right and tore its forehead open.

Looking back, I found Scott with his shotgun. He pumped a round in and fired at nearly point blank range at a pair that had been closing from my right. One fell, so I dispatched the other. She was probably in her sixties and dressed in rain gear. It was easy to imagine she had chosen the thick clothing to protect her from bites, but she was missing most of one hand. They must have started there when they turned her into a meal.

I shot her in the head and then started to fall back. I was not done with the fight, but I needed to get to the other side.

“Let’s go!” I called to Scott, but I didn’t stop to see if he heard me. I ran for the line of cars and jumped on an old Ford, landing with a boom that probably left a dent in the hood. In two breaths, I was over it and sliding to the ground, then through a line of defenders.

Zombies parted, but it soon became a tangle as I strove to get around the combatants. Guns in all forms came out as the zombies came on. From all sides, they poured out of the woods and into the streets. They came in pairs and then in tens. It was the worst scenario I could possibly imagine, submitting my newfound friends to this horror. They came covered in blood, some fresher than others. Some had only strips of flesh left, and some were missing limbs. One poor woman in a jogging suit was missing part of her face; she was no longer ‘juicy,’ that was for sure.

Reaching the other side of the compound, I slid over another car and into the street. I dashed for my Honda and flung the rear door open. The M249 came out, as did an extra pair of magazines.

The gun was immensely heavy, and I would be better off getting to cover so I could mount it on something. At this range, I would be far from accurate.

None of that mattered. I wanted to blast these things back to Hell. I wanted them all dead.

The gun was a terrible pounding that tore open the day like a plane was flying overhead. It jerked back against my shoulder, so I leaned in and fought the recoil as I sprayed a healthy dose of .223 rounds into the oncoming creatures. Parts flew off with sickening ease. Bodies fell back as the bullets hammered into them over and over. One would almost call it a bloodbath, but there wasn’t much blood.

Long before I was ready to stop, the gun ran out of rounds, so I dropped the giant drum and tossed it in the back of the truck. I slammed another magazine in and let out a fresh burst. The chatter of shots came from behind, but there was also the sound of engines starting up. One, a very low rumble, sounded like a big diesel engine.

I glanced over my shoulder to see an army of men and women setting up lines of defense. It looked like something out of a textbook on how to defend a line. Some lay on top of trucks and yammered away with assault rifles. Some, like Scott, had dropped the big guns and were going at it with handguns. He had what looked like army-issue .45s in each fist. He spun and shot, moved and shot, and when he shot, something fell.