I shook my head and blinked my eyes, clearing the vision from them. I didn’t have time for that kind of foolishness.
The zombies had spread out and there were no more than two or three in any given clump. They’d been too tantalized by the smorgasbord of food before them and spread out, running amok. It made it a little easier to try and pick them off, especially since Wash and I were the only ones who’d managed to hold on to our heads. I saw Felix in the corner holding off half a dozen zombies with his gun, but then the press of the people around us shifted him from view.
I turned to Fannie Mae to find that she was at my side. I wanted to tell her to hide, but knew there was nowhere she could go that she would be safe. The safest place for her was next to me. She had the sports bag over her shoulder and a box of open shells in her hand. We looked at each other stoically and nodded at each other.
Then Washington and I waded in.
I’d like to say that we were a well-oiled machine, watching each other’s backs and making only headshots, not wasting a single bullet, but I really can’t. We’d both been field-hardened tonight, but there’s something drastically different about fighting zombies and shooting guns in the middle of a building than there is when you’re outside and have a slight chance of escape. We both knew that this was our one chance at survival and that if we messed this up that every single person in this building would die.
And then get right back up again.
We approached the first two zombies where they were bent over a screaming, obese woman who was flailing around on the floor. She was at least 400 pounds and there was a lot for them to eat. Her stomach was wide open and the zombies were pulling flesh out by the handful, pouring it into their mouths. One of them pushed the others out of the way and buried his whole head in her stomach. She screamed and screamed, feeling every inch of being eaten alive. Her eyes locked on me and Wash and she screamed for our help over and over again.
The one zombie pulled the other’s head out of her stomach so he could have his chance and before he could bury his own head inside her I blew it away. Blood and gore sprayed over the other zombie and on the fat woman. The other zombie didn’t even notice as he prepared himself to go back inside of her. Both of his arms were buried to the elbow in her stomach and gray loops of intestine trickled out of the wound. Wash sighted his gun and shot that zombie in the eye and he fell over the woman.
I held out my hand to Fannie Mae and she slapped another shell in it as I chambered the shotgun. The woman was still screaming from the pain but she looked on Wash and me with gratitude. I paid that gratitude back by putting the shotgun an inch from her head and pulling the trigger. At the last second more panic had filled her eyes but I hadn’t given her the chance to protest. She didn’t realize that she’d been dead from the moment the zombie’s had touched her.
Several people had finally regained their equilibrium and were holding weapons as they raced toward the zombies. I wish they would have just stayed back rather than try to help. Their definition of zombie-killing weapons was definitely lacking. A chair leg here, a baseball bat there. A knife or two. If you had to get that close to a zombie to kill it then the chances were that you were already dead and just didn’t know it. Of course with this being a trailer park in the middle of down home Kentucky it didn’t take much for these people to think they had what it took to survive.
They didn’t.
Shove a knife into the chest of a zombie and what do you get? Um, a zombie with a knife in its chest that was now close enough to take a bite out of you. Aim for the head and the knife would likely bounce off of the thickness of the skull. Aim for the eye and if you were lucky enough to hit you should hope that you push it in deep enough to skewer the brain and that you did it quickly enough for it not to bite or infect you.
Dare I even tell you about the effectiveness of a chair leg or baseball bat? Break a zombie’s arm or leg and it just plain doesn’t care. I saw someone hit a zombie in the back of the head with a baseball bat hard enough to hear the crack of it over the cacophony of screams and it merely turned its head and bit the arm off at the wrist.
Zombies don’t feel pain and don’t care what happens to them. All they want to do is feed.
Wash and Fannie Mae and I made our way slowly across the room, killing zombies as we went. A path of destruction lay behind us. We left nothing moving and at first Wash wasn’t capable of shooting the ones who weren’t dead yet but when one of them was looking at him imploringly one second and the next was scrambling to bury her teeth in his throat he quickly changed his mind. I tried not to let it touch me as we killed my friends and neighbors, both the living and the dead. But the survival of the group was the most important thing. Actually, I lie, the survival of myself and Fannie Mae was all I really cared about. It was obvious that the group was doomed from the start.
The smell of gun smoke permeated the air and filled my nostrils. My shoulder was numb to the pain of the kickback of the shotgun and my fingertip was raw from the constant cocking of the gun. Fannie Mae had dropped the empty box of shells and we were halfway through the next one before we reached the final clump of zombies. It was the group that had cornered Felix and had him surrounded. I could still hear the sporadic gunshots coming from him but it was obvious he was overrun.
I looked at Wash wordlessly and he stepped forward, taking out the zombies one by one. His gun clicked on empty with two still remaining. They turned to us noiselessly, gore dripping from their mouths and hands. I stepped forward, gently pushing Wash out of the way, and blasted them into smithereens. Wash, with a blank expression on his face, kept pointlessly pulling the trigger on his empty gun.
A gasp of breath and a cry for help came from underneath the pile of zombies. A hand came out and gestured feebly. It was Felix. All the zombies had fallen on top of him. I reached out and grabbed a blanket off the floor, wrapping it around my hands and pulling the zombies away. I was afraid of what would happen if a zombie’s blood got on me. Could the blood itself transmit the infection? I looked at my blood-splattered clothes and prayed that it did not. If so I was most definitely screwed.
We cleared the zombies off of Felix. He lay there gasping and staring at us. His face was pale and chunks of skin were missing from his legs and arms where he’d tried and failed to fight the zombies off. He was still alive.
His eyes were glassy and unfocused until he caught a look at me and then intelligence crept into his gaze. He mouthed words silently but I had no idea what it was he was trying to say. I can’t read lips anyway, and he was doing it in Spanish. A whisper of breath entered his lungs and he said, “Madre de Dios. Puedo sentirlo en mi cerebro rastrero. Siento que mi vida comer.”
He shuddered and took another breath. Then he said the last words he’d ever say, “Es usted. Dios mío, es usted.” Then as we three watched him silently he pulled his gun up to his mouth, inserted the barrel, and pulled the trigger. I jumped back, feeling his words washing over me.
I had no idea what the hell he’d just said.
18.
That was pretty much the end of the zombies in there. Wash and I did our best to go around to the 40 or so survivors to see if any had been injured but most shrunk back from us in terror. They’d just seen us slaughter their family, friends, and neighbors and for some reason they didn’t want much to do with us. There were a few cradling hands to their chests and clutching towels to wounds. Pale skin marked their body and dark circles ran rings around their eyes. It was easy to pick out those who’d been marked and pull them from the herd.