Timothy Long: Beyond the Barriers

A search of the vehicle had turned up a couple of other weapons. I took a worn but well-oiled MP5 and had a few mags lined up near the flamethrower.

I set to clearing the immediate area while Scott dragged boxes from the back of the Humvee to our vehicle. He tossed me a large bottle of Gatorade, so I took the top off and drank warm but clean water out of it, draining it in a few massive swallows.

I turned the gun on one of the dead that had grown interested in Scott. His head exploded backwards, and his body slumped to the side, just like that. Another body to add to the list.

It only took a few minutes to move our supplies. If the rear door had been able to slide down, it would have been faster. The impact of the Humvee had damaged the rear too badly.

I slid down to help move things around, then we took our positions again.

“Ready?”

“Damn right.” I nodded.

We started at the rear of the camp. Our path was littered with the dead. When we came across them, we ran them down and kept going. I shot the few I had to, but I wanted to work from the rear to the front.

We approached the destroyed hut. The corrugated metal was pushed aside, thanks to my escape. I almost felt a sense of glee when I turned the flamethrower on the opening and set it for full stream. Fire raced down and roared into the space. It was so loud that I couldn’t hear any screams from those below. I let the fuel run for a few minutes until I was satisfied the place was sanitized.

It took most of the day to clean house. We worked from the other end of the camp, burning away any of the dead we found. Sometimes they came at us en masse, which made it easy to destroy them. When each section was cleared, Scott jumped out of the truck and freed any prisoners that were still in cages.

The stench of burning flesh tested my gag reflex. It filled the air, and I knew it would haunt my nightmares for years to come.

The survivors sat in what space they could find in the vehicle. A couple of the men took guns from our stash and joined in the massacre. We rescued a few children who couldn’t have been older than ten or twelve. I wondered why there were no others in Haley’s age range. Then it hit me: they probably took the older ones to convert to ghouls—which I had just destroyed.

The cleansing, as I thought of it, was a success. We left a mountain of scorched bodies in our wake. By the end of the battle, we had a tattered army of a dozen or so men and women. The younger members of the crew sat on the floor in the cramped vehicle. What seemed like a huge space before was filled with the wretched remains of the camp. Weary faces munched on the remaining protein bars. They drank what little water we had, and a few even broke into the energy drinks.

I stayed on the ladder for a long time, gun aimed at the opening to the camp so I could kill any stragglers. The flamethrower was just about out of fuel. I would have to work out the formula they used to create the custom device. It had been one of the most effective weapons since I came back to the world.

“You going to come down?” Scott called from the front. He popped out of the vehicle with the AK-47 slung down low. “I think I have this thing working.”

I crawled on top of the STRYKER then slid down inside. It was obvious we had cleaned the camp, as no other zombies wandered out. Flames still rose into the sky. A small section of forest had caught on fire, but it was dying down thanks to all the wet wood. An out-of-control fire in the woods would be a terrible sight. How would it ever be stopped?

Scott sat with his rifle in his lap. He had an old beat up CB radio with the top off on the ground in front of him. There was a wire running from a car battery to the inside.

I collapsed beside him, my body more tired than it had ever been. Talk drifted from inside the STRKER, but I couldn’t make out the words. The refugees had been grateful, but some also wore distrustful looks.

He adjusted something on the inside and, with a crackle, the speaker let out a squawk. He hit a knob then adjusted a dial, and his eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas. Then he turned up the volume a little bit. A flat hiss sounded, but it wasn’t so loud it might call any remaining zombies within the vicinity to our camp.

“Now we wait.” He grinned and patted the top of the radio.

“Wait for what?”

“Wait for someone to talk to us. A bunch of groups keep in contact with CB’s, but we can’t run them all the time.”

“Let me guess, on a particular channel that requires a decoder ring to gain access too?”

“Something like that.” He laughed.

We sat in silence for a few moments, both of us waiting for the radio to speak up.

“Do I need to say it?” Scott’s gaze drifted toward our vehicle.

“That we rescued a lot of people?”

“No, man. How many of them are like Haley? About to change …” He trailed off as he turned his eyes back to the burning camp.

“We don’t know that for sure. We don’t know if she was one of them.”

“Come on, man. She was. Lee was an asshole, and he could have handled it differently. The fact is, we might have learned a lot from her. Maybe she wouldn’t have been like the others. Maybe our influence would have kept her on our side.”

‘Our side.” I thought dully, What is our side? “People hiding out, waiting for something to happen.”

“Better than the alternative.”

“It is, but we have to do something about it. I’m sick of running, of being afraid. I’m tired of seeing groups of people divided. We need to find a place to call home and get people organized.”

Scott looked thoughtful.

“There are a lot of people out there still. People that want to fight back. I say we head to Portland, find Lisa and her crew, and start the revolution.”

“And then what? Make an army of flamethrowers and clean out these camps? Do you know how long that will take?”

“It’s better than the alternative. If we let them continue to multiply, we will never win.”

Scott sighed, but he had to know I was right.

“So what do we do now?”

“Go back to the farm, get some rest, and then make a break for Portland. If some of these folks want to go with us, they’re welcome. The rest can go their separate ways.”

“Works for me. All I want to do is rejoin my old friends. Lisa, I miss her.”

“You have something going with her?” I had wondered if she moved on after Devon.

“I don’t know. We spent some time together. What do you think? Would we make a good match?” He grinned.

“She is pretty fiery. Good with a gun. She might shoot you if you piss her off. I mainly knew her before the change. I guess that means I didn’t really know her at all.”

Scott chuckled and stared at the flames.

The day had been exhausting, but I suspected the coming days would be worse. My body was sore, and my face hurt from the fight with Lee. I wished I had found his body so I could finish him off. He would never see reason, no matter how hard I argued. I had to stop and reflect on the fact that I had so glibly decided to kill another human being. Eradicating the dead was making it easy to kill. Was one human life so cheap?

We sat for a long time as the flames died down and smoke continued to rise. As night came on, we decided to make for the farm and call it a day.

As I stood up, a voice came over the speaker. I just about jumped out of my skin.

“News of the world?” A female voice that sounded familiar to me. Deep, but still female.

“Hey. If it ain’t the mysterious Lizabeth,” Scott said. “You can’t believe how happy I am to hear you. It’s been a while.”

“Well if it isn’t the smartass. I thought maybe they got you.”