She turned and ran towards the fence, carrying her two guns with her as she went. She had just cleared the fence when she heard the angry shouts behind her. Stopping in the woods she braced herself against a tree and watched as several fast moving figures fanned out in the back yard. Gunfire erupted from inside the house and the figures outside crouched down, making smaller targets in the overgrown grass.
Katie smiled smugly, she could have killed any of them from this range, it wasn't even a hard shot despite the dim light of the moon. She settled the crosshairs on the shadowy head of the figure closest to the back patio. No more gunfire came from within and the zombie she was aiming at pointed at the grill, which was giving off a little flickering light from the open lid. Katie could tell it was a male, and he moved as if he had some sort of training, either police or military, he shied away from the windows of the house, but, of course he wasn't being watched from inside the house.
'That's it, move just a little closer. Stand up a little more, perfect!' Katie slowly squeezed the trigger and the man's head burst apart, the bullet lined up perfectly with the propane tank sitting on the hot flames of the grill and the pressurized tank blew open when the bullet struck it. The resulting explosion sent a fireball screaming into the sky and blew down part of the kitchen wall and shattered all of the windows in the house. Katie felt the massive heat wave from the blast from where she was, a good hundred yards away.
The house caught fire and the pile of propane tanks had been scattered all over the patio, with some blown into the kitchen itself. Katie risked waiting a few seconds for the kitchen to really go up, and then took aim at another of the propane tanks. This explosion didn't seem as fierce to Katie as the first, but its effects were far more devastating; it lifted part of the house up off of its foundation, when it crashed back down fully half the house collapsed.
Katie looked for the figures in the grass, they all still seemed to be there, stunned by the force of the explosions. Most of them were still moving, rolling to their stomachs to crawl away from the fire. 'Easy pickings.' She thought, it was tempting to pick a few of them off as they lay in the yard, but she fell back into her role and decided fading away would be a better idea than getting into a firefight.
Moving at a trot she followed her path back to her duffel back, which she picked up and tossed into the jeep. Starting the vehicle she backed onto the beach, which was much smaller now that the tide had come in.
"You happy?" Randy asked.
"It was a great idea."
"I'm not saying it wasn't. But now it just makes you a larger threat. You can't kick the anthill without repercussions."
"Oh, I think there would have been repercussions anyway."
"Well, maybe you would have been a lower level threat. Now you've done pissed him off. I mean you break into his house, kill his woman, ambush his men; twice, and steal his stuff. Then to top it all off you burn the place down."
"Hey!" protested Katie, "He doesn't know I stole his stuff now! I was just covering our tracks."
Randy laughed.
"Let's find another place to hole up and work on finding him in the morning. I could use some Randy time." Katie said.
Smiling at her allusion to what that meant when they were alive, Randy replied, "I'm all yours sweet heart."
Chapter 34 — Max
"So, Max, can you see anything yet?" Stewart asked. She sounded a little irritated to Max, something that made him chose his response a little more carefully.
"Nothing. I mean no beacon in the sky or anything like that, I know we have to head to the south from here and as close to the coast as we can get."
Bill nodded and pointed on the map he had liberated from a gas station the day before, "Well, you can't get much closer to the coast than highway 1A, or do you think getting on highway 95 would do it? Both are pretty dang close to the ocean."
"I don't know which ones Aubrey said would be clear. Maybe we should go with highway 1?" answered Max.
"Fair enough we don't want to miss the guy. If we end up in Key West we can double back this way on highway 95 to make up for lost time." Bill closed the atlas and continued, "Okay this should be an easy trip, we'll drive east a bit until we hit highway 95, then it crosses over highway 1 just south of Jacksonville, we'll turn onto that road and keep heading south until Max says otherwise. Everybody clear on that?"
A round of 'yeses' and nods answered his question. It was eight fifteen in the morning and the sky was clear to the west, but dark and ominous to the east, there was definitely a storm coming in. The five of them were finishing up breakfast and were planning on doing a weapons and ammunition check before they left.
"So, when Max spots the guy we are going to run in as close as we can get, drop the backpack and bug out fast. That's the plan?" Ruben asked.
"Yeah, I can't think of any way to make it simpler. I don't want any heroics and if we never have to even see him, that's okay with me." said Bill.
"Any back up plans?" Ruben was looking closely at Bill again.
"What do you suggest, Ruben?"
"Well, nothing ever goes like we want it to. I think we should at least have a rendezvous, a fall back location that we agree to meet at if everything hits the fan. I think it should be here first, but if we end up driving another hundred miles we should choose another location closer to the target. Just in case."
"That makes sense, if we get separated we come back to this rest area and wait, say three days? After that we could meet at the campground we were at yesterday, then the airfield they dropped us off at. How about this we scratch our names into the bathroom stall doors along with a date? The last stall in the bathroom should do, then we'll at least be able to know if anyone was there before us or not."
"I like that. Three day layovers at each place and even if no one shows, we are all least making our way back to Iowa." said Stewart.
"Okay, let's check guns and ammo and get this done. We could be heading home by the end of today, wouldn't that be something? To have this over with?" Bill asked.
"Yeah, but I won't be happy until we are back in Iowa with the kids." Max said.
"I'd drink to that." said Ruben.
"Guns first, then zombies, then drinking." laughed Bill.
They laid their guns out on the hood of the cars and went through their available ammo for each of them. Everyone except Ruben still had military rifles and Ruben's shotgun was still in good working order too. Again, everyone except Ruben had pistols as backup weapons, Ruben had his combat knife and Stewart was carrying a second back up pistol and the machete she had taken from the state patrol headquarters. Ammunition was still plentiful. They had been given ten magazines with each rifle along with two cases of extra bullets when they had been dropped off by the military. Unfortunately they had burned through most of the extra ammo along the way, they still had eight magazines of military grade ammunition for each gun, plus two loaded with the less accurate.223 ammo they had found. Ruben was drowning in shells for the shotgun, he had well over a hundred left after taking the shells Max had started with. He made sure his gun was fully loaded and he stashed twenty five shells in various pockets in his fatigues before he stowed the rest in his pack. The others divvied up the loose.223 rounds and put them in their packs as well. Stewart and Ruben looked over all the guns and gave them a quick clean up before they were reloaded and handed back to the owners.
"I'll lead off with Max. You three follow behind us." Stewart said.
Bill started to say something, but Max glanced at him and shook his head slightly until he just said, "Okay."