Timothy Long: Beyond the Barriers

The only deaths I wanted to cause would help finish the job that God started with these things. I wanted them all on the ground, no longer moving.

The strangest thing in that strange day happened. A plane buzzed overhead. It was a small Cessna—something I hadn’t seen in a good long time. The tiny craft dipped low, slowed, and scanned the camp. I crouched down and took aim, just in case. But what in the world was I going to do? Shoot down a potential ally? If it held friends of Lee, then that might be a different story, but I doubted his ragtag group could muster up a pilot and organize flights to find him. It was only fifteen hours or so since I had kicked his ass out of the truck.

What did the airplane signify? Was there an organized base of some sort nearby? Maybe they were getting ready to fuel bomb the sight and I was about to join my enemies in a massive pyre.

Some of the dead paused in their aimless ambling. They looked up and considered the propelled bird, and then moved along again. I marked five or six right away and began to build up a map in my head. The topography of the piece of land left minimal cover. Lucky for me, I wouldn’t need it. Our plan was simple. I would provide a distraction to draw in the Z’s, start cutting them down, and then the guys would come in and take care of stragglers. Once we had most of them gathered close, it would be a slaughter.

That was the plan, but I knew from past experience that no part of a plan went as intended once that first shot was fired.

I skirted farther into the trees as the plane roared away in the distance. The wind shifted, and I got a whiff of the dead, the dying, and the rot of those left in the cages. Some had been forgotten or refused to do the bidding of the ghouls. Their lifeless bodies clutched bars or lay curled up. One, a woman, judging from her frame and remaining clothes, clutched a child to her chest. Her body was wasted, head covered in pus and scabs. Her desiccated arms latched onto the smaller person in a death grip. The child, who appeared to be about three, squirmed in her embrace. His eyes, green and glowing, shone with malevolent intent. I shuddered and moved in.

There was a group of them standing over a still body. They had torn off most of the person’s flesh, one arm, and part of a leg. I counted seven or eight of the things and decided it was a good place to start.

Slinging the rifle over my back, I checked my two handguns. I patted each magazine on my chest as I confirmed where everything lay. On each shoulder, a pair of green eggs sat. I had taken the time on the ride over to wrap the metal parts in strips of cloth, so they didn’t clink when I moved. Two came free in my hands.

The pin came out with a click that sounded as loud as a gunshot in my head. Well it was too late now; I was already moving away from cover to deliver my first volley.

With a large stride, I came out from behind a huge oak and swung my arm forward. The grenade flew in an arc that fell just short of the undead. After I popped the other pin, I moved one step closer. This one landed just to the side of one of the zombies. It looked at it, but nothing stirred in that brain. Nothing to tell it to move, jump, or just get the fuck out of the way. It stared at it like a curiosity.

The first explosion ripped the air in a ball of hate and high-speed shrapnel. I was already behind the large tree, trying to make myself as small as possible. Pieces of metal accelerated by the explosion whizzed past me, as did chunks of the dead. When I peeked around the corner, a scene from a nightmare greeted me. Some had been blown apart, while others had lost limbs and were still moving on the ground. There wasn’t much blood, owing to their strange physiology, but they still came apart just like normal humans.

One, bereft of its legs, crawled away, so I shot it first. Gun up, forehead sighted, the stock hammered into my shoulder as I put the thing down. Then I aimed and fired until I had finished most of them off.

I moved farther along the camp perimeter. The zombies were on the move, too, looking for the source of the explosion. They came off the ground, rising like ghostly apparitions. They moved in slow motion at first, but faster as they sensed something was up.

How could the dead sense anything? They might have reacted to sound or to the explosion, but they couldn’t see me. Still, I felt like they were looking right at me, like their eyes were burrowing into my soul.

It was the ghouls. They had to be stopped. I had to eradicate them and free their hold on the masses before me.

There were a few, then there were a couple more, then dozens of them. They came at the woods with their lumbering strides, slack jaws, and empty eyes. They came in their masses with the stench of the earth surrounding them. Flies buzzed around them in clouds as they feasted on blood and any exposed viscera they could find.

I moved from tree to tree, keeping them in my sight at all times. I would stop and fire, drop a few, and then move. But for every one I shot, two or three replaced them. The camp had been infested with the bastards. If I had to put a count to them, I would have guessed three or four hundred. I did not have that many shots.

Any minute now, the guys would come in blazing, flank the mass, and I would make for the shack and kill the green-eyed demons. The .50 caliber would ring out with its pulsating whump whump whump, and I would be able to complete my task.

More were on the move, and I had to make a run for it. I came to a clearing and jumped to the side in an attempt to stay out of view. I was behind a copse, but it was overgrown with blackberry bushes. I had to skirt it, and this exposed me to their eyes. They moaned and howled for my blood, and I shivered in the warming day.

Into the woods again. A branch to the face. Eyes closed as I brushed away the dry needles. Into a tree at nearly full speed. I struck it and nearly fell over, so I paused to catch my breath, smelling them on the air. They were close.

On the run again. More undead to my right. I wrapped the rifle strap over my shoulder so I could draw my handgun. A guy broke through the trees with a woman in tow. They were joined at the wrist by handcuffs, and I almost laughed out loud at the sight of them both naked. Must have been an interesting story there—one I wouldn’t ever get to hear. One they wouldn’t ever tell, either, as I shot them both. The first shot pegged the guy and tossed him to the ground like a ragdoll. I managed to get the girl in the shoulder as she spun, and a second shot took the side of her head off.

Moving again. There was a horde just ahead, so I unsnapped another grenade and threw it from my side, arm whipping out from my body. I kept moving as it WHUMPED behind me.

As if in answer, a gunshot called out behind me, far behind me. What kept them so long?

With the cavalry on the way, I decided to risk the open area. If they made speed in the truck, they would break into the open area in less than a minute.

I was twenty or thirty feet from the mass of zombies when I came screaming out of the trees, rifle blazing, popping off as many rounds as I could. All high shots, so I would take the zombies in the head, if possible. Changing magazines on the run was an exercise in patience, as I had to feel the rounds into the gun.

With a fresh round in the chamber, I blasted a couple that came into view ahead of me. One went down, but my second shot went wide, and I nearly ran into the second zombie. A front kick sent it reeling, and I passed the bastard, on my way again.

The shack was ahead, and, all around me, the cages rose like a weird circus. Some still had humans in them. We had to have missed them in the craziness of the night before. God, had it only been a day?

More shots sounded behind me—a mix of automatic and single rounds. That did not sound right. Then the big machine gun opened up, and I grinned as I shot another zombie. This bullet took it in the throat and must have passed through the spine because it went down without a sound.