Tanner said, “You’d send us out there without weapons? Send us out to be killed? Should have known you were a yellow-belly. Your kind always is.”
A dangerous light gleamed in Washington’s eye. “My kind?”
A woman who could only be Tanner’s wife spoke up from behind him. “Yeah, nigger.”
Rage at the word bristled in Washington’s face. I could feel the wave of hatred that word had caused ripple throughout the room. People stepped forward eagerly to see what would happen next.
Washington’s hand tightened where he held his gun and I saw him bring up a couple inches from where it pointed at the floor. It quivered there for a moment before going back down. He sighed wearily, “If you want to leave, Tanner, then leave. I don’t give a crap if you live or die, but you’re not putting the rest of us in danger.”
“And you’re not getting any weapons,” I piped in. Fannie Mae’s hand tightened on my arm. Tanner and the rest turned to me and I gave them my most winning grin, shotgun held easily in my grip.
He took a step in my direction and I grinned even wider. That seemed to stop him. He eyed me critically. He looked like your typical trailer trash: white, grimy and stupid. Not an ounce of shame in him.
Fannie Mae spoke up. “Careful, Tanner. Your white trash is showing.”
He actually snarled and took another step toward us. I raised the shotgun easily to my shoulder and pointed it directly at him. “Don’t worry, Tanner. I’ll make sure to hit your head with the first shot. Wouldn’t want you to come back.”
There’s no way the standoff would have ended well. They were too frightened and too stupid to have it go any other way. They were the kind of people who would run a lame horse into the ground and then beat it for not moving.
It started with a rattle on the front door. It was the loudest sound in the whole House. All 40 or so pairs of eyes slowly turned to face the door. The knob was rattling loosely in the frame. After several seconds several pairs of hands started beating methodically on the wood. I saw the door moving rhythmically in its frame. Sawdust fell from the boards holding it in place on the inside.
That was when I realized that Washington had brought all the guards with him to try and break up the ruckus. All the doors and windows were left completely unguarded. It was as if something was waiting for me to come to that realization cause that’s when two of the windows on the far side of the hall flew inward with a crash, glass flying everywhere and cutting some of the closer refugees. Hands flailed around outside the windows and reached in, searching for some kind of purchase.
Washington and I slowly turned to face each other across the ten feet or so separating us. I think I saw the same look of horror on his face that was in mine. Although I hope that my eyes didn’t look as crazed as his, all white and shiny.
I remember the rest only in flashes of memory.
Tanner suddenly rushing toward me, reaching for my gun, a snarl on his face. Me instinctively pulling the trigger of the shotgun where I had it already resting on my shoulder. His brains splattering on his wife behind him. Her cries of rage, or sorrow, or whatever they were, as she launched herself at me with her white trash fingernails reaching to claw my eyes out. I did not have the time to chamber another round so I held the gun by the barrel and instead swung it like a club. It connected with her jaw with a sickening crunch and her falling to the floor in a heap.
Washington yelling something to me over the sudden screams of the refugees. Me making the conscious decision to turn my back on him and try to save Fannie Mae and myself.
The lights starting to flicker off and on and someone realized he hadn’t refueled the generator in several hours.
More windows breaking on all sides as the zombies finally figured out where all the food was.
In the flashes of light I could see the zombies beginning to crawl in through the windows. The screams, if it were possible, got louder.
I reloaded the spent shells into the shotgun and stared around me wildly. My brain was shutting down. We were dead. All dead. There were more zombies in the room now than there were people and more were streaming into the window with every second. I could feel my breath coming from a million miles away and my hands were shaking so erratically that I couldn’t have hit a zombie if it were inches away from me.
Fannie Mae rested her hand on my arm calmly, assuredly. I turned my head to look at her. Her face changed from one flash of the light to the next from zombie to sweet Fannie Mae. From Fannie Mae to rotting zombie. Back and forth again and again. She moved forward into my arms and pressed her lips to mine. It was cold and sweet and warm and wet and suddenly…
Everything solidified. The world came rushing back in.
19.
We parted. She looked at me calmly, trusting in me to save us. Her trust in me gave me the confidence in myself to do something about it.
“You have the bag?”I asked.
She nodded and patted it where it lay across her shoulders in reply.
“Stay close,” I said.
I looked around the room. It was a slaughter. The zombies couldn’t have planned it better if they’d tried. (And I truly hoped they hadn’t had the ability to plan it; that would change the dynamic completely.) Most of the survivors had been in the center of the room watching the little confrontation between me and Wash and his men and Tanner and his. No one had been watching the windows or doors. When the zombies had come rushing in from all sides the people had been completely surrounded.
Some tried to fight with their bare hands and were immediately eaten and turned. Others tried to attack with the baseball bats and pieces of wood that had worked so well earlier. They at least lasted a little longer against the horde. Washington’s men with their weapons stood around in a little cluster, not shooting, hoping to come up with a plan to get out of here. There was zero chance that they had enough rounds to completely kill the horde.
There was absolutely zero chance that I had enough rounds to kill them all. That meant saving shells and making every shot count while we tried to find our way out of here.
Washington and his mean hadn’t moved from their position a dozen feet from us. Fannie Mae and I were still pressed up against the wall and there were zombies and people on all sides. I looked over to Wash and saw him eying me. He gestured me in his direction. I sighed and nodded. Getting out of here as a group was really our only option.
We started running for him. I sensed more than heard or saw the zombie coming at us from the left and pivoted to face it, shooting it in the legs. At this point killing the zombies mattered less than slowing them down. His legs were ripped from under him and he could only crawl in our direction. I looked back at Wash and saw him eyeballing something behind us and raising his gun. I tugged on Fannie Mae and skidded to my knees. She immediately sensed what I was doing and followed after me.
I felt the shot pass over my head and ruffle my hair as it whizzed past, thunking into the zombie that was behind us.
I quickly got back to my feet and pointed the gun back in the direction we’d come from. There were no more zombies heading directly for us.