This fire represented the end of so many things, and hopefully the beginning of a new safer life for my family. “I wish you were here to enjoy this with me Eliza,” I muttered as I thrust the flare up and through the hole. The flame flashed brilliantly as it came in contact with the gaseous vapors. I crinkled my nose as the smell of burnt arm hair wafted up. If I found this smell offensive, it was a vale of roses on a warm spring day after a brief rain shower compared to what assaulted my olfactory senses next. The smell of zombies can be topped by only one other smell, that of burning zombies. Roasting on an open pit was preferable to the cloying stink of melting decayed flesh that ran rampant through the farmhouse.
There were no screams of mercy coming from upstairs. No shrieks of terror or pain only the mindless hunt for food. There was no mass exodus from the premises. We knew this by the unrelenting assailment on the basement door. Would the door give before the floor? Or would we succumb to smoke inhalation, death by breathing in the dead. Oh just fucking gross.
“You guys ready?” I asked again.
“Let’s give this a shot.” BT said making sure his rifle was fully loaded.
Jen didn’t say anything but thankfully she picked up her HK, popped in a new magazine and nodded to me. We three stood for a moment side by side looking at the door that led to the bulkhead. Long moments passed. Realizing your death is imminent is one thing. Rushing headlong into it is completely another matter. The basement door cracked or it may have been a floor joist.
“Well that’s decided.” I said as I opened the basement door that led to freedom, in theory anyway.
The heavy aluminum bulkhead doors were heavily dented from the sheer number of zombies standing on them trying to get into the house.
“I guess the fire didn’t scare them away so much.” BT noted.
“Yeah, didn’t work in Little Turtle. Was expecting sort of the same result here.” I said. “Seems like the fire and heat might actually attract them instead of repel them.”
“Talbot, I figured we wouldn’t get out of this, but why did you volunteer? You have so much more to lose than either of us.” BT asked pointing to himself and Jen.
“I thought this was going to be a chance to give my family a fresh start. I didn’t think Eliza was going to pull a no-show on me. I wanted to be there personally, when she took her last…whatever she takes.”
It was definitively the cellar door that had shown signs of weakness previously. Zombies literally began to tumble down the stairs and onto the basement floor. BT unloaded a clip of 30 aught 6 rounds up and through the aluminum doors. Heavy, congealed bluish tainted blood ran in rivulets through the holes. I wanted to jump out of my skin as the, what I believed to be, caustic liquid ran down my head and neck and pooled in the small of my back as we all pushed up on the doors. A couple of zombies still on the doors had the actual benefit of a small carnival ride as they slid off and into a snowdrift.
Zombies were within touching distance before we opened up a large can of ass whooping. Those unlucky few that were closest to us quickly became nourishment for next year’s crops. But this was more futile than trying to bale water out of an already sunken ship. A veritable sea of healthy flesh challenged people awaited our embrace. Jen ran back down the stairs. I figured she had panicked when in actuality she may have saved a few extra precious seconds of our time remaining.
I heard the basement door slam shut below us. Zombies in front, zombies behind, the crackling heat of the fire to our backs was becoming increasingly difficult to tolerate.
“Any ideas?” BT asked me. “You know because if you do, now is not the time to keep them to yourself.”
“Only one at this point.”
BT didn’t look at me as I spoke, too intent on firing his rifle that he was. “Yeah what is it?”
“Keep firing until you have one round left.” The implied meaning in that sentence was clear.
He looked over briefly at me and lifted his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. “Makes sense to me.” And he kept on firing.
Jen had shut the bulkhead doors and was standing on them looking out over the Dead Sea. “I can see them!” She said excitedly.
“Why haven’t they left yet?” I yelled back to her.
“I don’t know, but at least they’re safe.”
That was a heavy burden I could release from myself. At least they were safe. That part of the plan had worked perfectly. Carol’s homestead had two tornado shelters, which were used more for pickling and canning jam than anything else. One was located near the animal barn. The other was out in the field at least a good half-mile from the house. Put there so that if someone was caught unawares of an impending storm they would still be able to seek shelter. It was a rumored family secret that during prohibition that shelter had served as a lucrative still.
The plan was with Justin knocked unconscious we would move him to the shelter and blindfold him so that he would not have any idea that he was anywhere but where he thought he was, the basement. Eliza and her horde of smelly citizens would then converge on the house where we would allow them to come in, en masse, and then lay waste to Carol’s house. Once the zombies had passed the shelter on by, Tracy was supposed to get them all out of here, and we would (theoretically) meet up a mile or so down the road. That way if Eliza somehow survived this holocaust she would not know that we had also survived.
The problems with the plan were numerous. First off Eliza hadn’t come to the dance. Secondly we had way more party crashers than we had intended and thirdly, Tracy hadn’t fucken left before we died!!
“She sees us!” She’s waving, Jen yelled.
“If she tries to rescue us, I’m going to shoot her myself!”
Jen jumped down off the doors as the heat from the melting house began to blister us all.
We couldn’t see anything, except the nearest wave of zombies, which thankfully weren’t children. Most of them had become roasting marshmallows in the house behind us. But we all heard what came next.
BT looked up from his sights. “Is that a horn?”
CHAPTER 26 
“Oh fucking Tracy, what are you doing woman?” I moaned. “Don’t make me die for nothing.”
We were all down to the dregs of our ammo, and I had been completely serious about holding one bullet for myself, when the cannon fire erupted and then I saw the familiar front grill of the white Ford pickup bracketed by two military vehicles. Trailing was your standard issue Marine Corps Humvee, in front was a six wheeled lightly armored troop transport. There were waves of joy and waves as despair, was the violence of existence worth it? Joy because help was coming, despair because it was too far away. The .50 caliber machinegun mounted on the turret of the troop transport, was shredding through zombies, head shots weren’t warranted when bodies were literally being torn in two. There’s a reason why the Geneva convention had expressly forbidden the act of shooting personnel with this type of gun. It made identifying the deceased a nearly impossible task.
I was gauging the number of rounds I had with how long it was going to take the trucks to get here. It was looking like a typical Vegas wager, the house was the favorite and we were the mark.
Maybe the sight of us, or my thoughts actually held sway over the caravan as they began to speed up.
“That’s not Tracy.” BT said from his higher vantage point.
“Nicole? Travis? Please tell me no.” I begged.
“Brendon.”
“Are you fucking kidding me BT?”
“Does now really seem like the time Talbot?”
As I was pondering this new information, my AR dry fired. My Glock was up next, I had 500 rounds but only 5 clips, once those fifty clipped rounds were gone, it was over, unless of course I could call ‘time-out’ and the zombies would allow it. Then I’d be able to reload and have a fighting chance.