“What do you think,” said Jodi, huffing after her exhaustive firing. She breathed deeply while waiting for his reply.
After a deep breath, Pierce nodded. “I think we got ‘em.”
They cautiously walked toward the bodies. They prodded with the tips of their weapons, neither moved. Pierce slung his rifle over his shoulder and knelt to turn a body. The human male was riddled with bullets, bleeding from all holes, dead to the world.
Pierce looked at the face, wondering who he was. “Poor dude. I bet he had no idea his day would end like this.”
With great care, he turned the zombie. Comparing the two, the zombie had twice as many holes as the man. Secretly, Pierce grinned, he longed to shoot something and this day had provided him with a lifetime of memories. He hated having to shoot the man, but he was dead anyway. Shooting him was a mercy killing. Gazing at the zombie, he frowned. He hadn’t seen it before. It wore no military uniform and therefore was not a soldier from his squad. The bullet-laden face was young, possibly twenty. Pierce was happy he didn’t meet the zombie in a dark alley. He stood.
“Let’s find the others,” he said.
“Got your mojo back?” teased Jodi.
“I’m army,” he boasted. “My job is protection. Come on, let’s get them before they get away.”
Pierce led. They walked past the carnage into deeper cover. Remembering his training, Pierce looked at the trees intently. He cocked his head skyward, scanning every branch in case a zombie fell. He will not be taken by surprise, his mojo was back. With a tightly gripped rifle, Pierce moved forward with a searching gaze.
Jodi stayed with him as they snaked along a hiker’s trail. Her companion stopped and she had to screech to a halt to keep from running into him. Ahead, in the middle of the trail, the unimaginable.
Putting a hand to his chin, Pierce rubbed his sprouting stubble in deep thought. Jodi was a civilian and a woman. A pretty woman. No, a gun toting woman. He felt a protective instinct and wanted to shield her from what she peeked around to see. Giving up on the effort, he moved forward with her trailing. Each aimed their weapon in the direction of travel. On the trail, an arm, ripped off from some poor soul. He scanned the blood trail ahead, quickening his pace to match his heart rate.
They passed the discarded arm and ran into entrails. Though they were small pieces, he believed them from the one-armed soul. If not for what he had witnessed earlier, he would swear they were animal remains of a squirrel or rabbit. Pierce no longer had that illusion to fall on. These were human entrails with blood droppings leading to the inevitable.
Pierce led his companion in silence. He would have offered a joke, the last being of two zombies at a bar with a monkey. Under the circumstances, he didn’t think it would go over well, so silence it was.
Suddenly, they stopped. The wind brought strange sounds to them. Pierce could feel himself shaking. He never imagined all those zombie movies would grow into reality. There it was, the reality of flesh-eating zombies. Ahead, he knew from the sound, they were munching on his one-armed soul. He prayed it was only one of the fiends. He marched on. The sound would be his guide and he would hone in on the creature and put it down, if possible. With a thundering heartbeat and a shaking hand, he moved forward knowing just around the bend he would meet the owner of the noise he sought.
They came to a clearing and saw the inevitable, the two missing zombies in uniforms. Kill these two and they stop the outbreak. Loud noises came from their heavy feeding. Pierce tried blocking them out as he and Jodi approached with stealth, guns high. Each Zombie Soldier had a victim they munched on in front of an RV camper. At first look, it appeared the campers were sitting around a fire in front of their vehicle. They were having an old-fashioned, get-back-to-nature campout.
The first zombie had pulled off a leg to devour. He sat making slobbering noises as he feasted on a man’s leg with shoe and sock still in place. The rest of the body lay in a heap, claw marks and bites throughout. The other zombie knelt on all fours and braced against a skirted body as its mouth ripped flesh from the thin underbelly of its victim.
Pierce eyed the wedding ring on her finger, but was not able to see its replica on the man’s body. He stopped and aimed. The act of aiming gave an audible click the zombies heard. They broke from their meal to find the source of the noise.
“Fire!” yelled Pierce.
He screamed at the top of his lungs as he lost control and opened on the zombies. Jodi was at his side mimicking his vocals and movements. Their combined spray pumped hot lead into everything it touched. When they finally stopped, each corpse lay littered with gaping holes. As for the camper, bullet holes found their target, flattening a back tire and creating a polka dot finish where previously none existed.
“Hold on,” said Pierce.
They went to the bodies to have a look. Pierce knelt and wiped blood from Zombie Soldier’s name tag.
“Do you know him?” asked Jodi.
“Yeah. It’s Joshua Bastogne. We signed up together.”
“Sorry,” said Jodi.
Pierce pulled his dog tags and put them in his pocket. “Joshua lives with his parents and has a baby sister. How do I deliver his tags and give a believable story?”
“Stick close to the truth and it will sound authentic.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
“What about him?” asked Jodi. She rolled over the body and wiped the name tag for her friend.
The soldier was much older, twice as old and graying. “Jeremiah Lake. He joined about a year ago from South Carolina. He is one of two black soldiers in our squad. I never got a chance to know him.” Pierce bowed his head.
Jodi pulled his tags and handed them over for safekeeping.
“That’s the last of them,” said Pierce, “we better head back. With any luck, the sergeant got through and help is on the way.”
Jodi pulled the list from her pocket. She sat with her back against the camper, looking down the list. She looked at Pierce. “Do you have a pen or pencil? I need something to write with.”
“Yeah, hold on.”
He found an ink pen and gave it to her. He sat next to her as she marked off names on the list. Jodi mumbled as she wrote. Pierce tried listening, but could only catch every other word. In frustration he gave up on the idea and sat, waiting.
“Here,” Jodi finally said. “I got the visitors and campers. Think of all your members and write them down. Then we will both go over the list and remember what happened to each of them.”
“All right.”
Pierce took the paper and began writing. He marveled as he began the same mumbling ritual he tried deciphering moments ago. When finished, they went through the list and came to the same conclusion: two people were unaccounted for, Zombie Mom and the armless soul.
Getting to his feet and brushing off his uniform, Pierce gave a confident yet surreal look to his partner. “Ready?”
“Let’s do this,” said Jodi.
“By the numbers,” echoed Pierce.
Again, he led. A chill went down his back, he stopped and turned, gun high.
“What?” asked an alarmed Jodi.
“The camper,” he said in a low voice. “We better check it out.”
“Yeah,” said Jodi. Pierce didn’t like the way she said it and gave her a whimsical look. She was so gung ho a moment ago, what happened?
He crept to the door and as he readied to grip and turn the knob, the door flew open with a bang. The door caught the tip of his weapon and he and his tight grip went sailing with the rifle against the camper’s wall.
A stunned Pierce heard gunfire. In his confused state, he could see Jodi firing at the camper’s door. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs. As he rose, an armless zombie fell from the doorway to the ground. Pierce grabbed his gun and ran to assist Jodi as she continued to blast away at the fallen zombie. After a while, Pierce stopped and gripped her shoulder. “Ease up, you got him.”
“Sorry.” Jodi took her finger from the t
rigger.
“Well, that leaves the mother. You better change that clip,” he counseled.
“Yeah, I better,” said Jodi.
Pierce waited for her to complete the change. It gave him time to check his own weapon. When ready, they walked forward to enter the camper. The armless zombie amused Pierce. He wondered how the thing could eat if it couldn’t hold its prey in its grip while it fed. The only solution that came to mind was that it would have to sneak up on some poor soul while they slept. If it was fortunate, its first bite would be the kill shot. A snicker came to his face as he stepped over the useless corpse.
He opened the door. The foul stench that greeted them drove them back, almost to the point of not continuing. That wasn’t possible, they had a mission and it had to be done. They held a hand to their mouths as they fully committed and entered the camper. First, they saw pieces of an arm chewed to the bone. Next, they saw a playpen. Pierce’s heart dropped at seeing it and as he looked at Jodi, he saw the same expression on her face.
Together, they crept to the crib, expecting to find something horrific. The crib had wooden bars with a metal sheet of some kind that prevented the baby from escaping its enclosure. As they peeked over the top, the twitching hairs at the base of his neck stood straight up, indicating danger. One peek and his body had told him the truth.
Inside the crib they saw the remains of a child. The top half of the body was missing, eaten away. That which remained had a foul odor to it. Karma is a bitch, he thought. The whole while he was ridiculing the armless zombie and wondering about its survival, the zombie had found a meal, one who couldn’t get away. Pierce regretted his earlier snicker. He hung his head low and tried not to break down and cry.
Jodi patted him on the back to comfort him. Before she could deliver words of encouragement, they heard a thud on the roof. Above them, at the far end of the camper, impressions appeared in the camper’s ceiling. First, they saw one impression, then another, and another, all leading toward them. Pierce motioned and they crept toward the camper’s door. With gun high, Pierce leaped out of the camper, rolled, then crouched with his gun trained on the roof. He searched thoroughly, but nothing was there. He motioned for Jodi to come and join him. She did.
Both stared at the camper’s roof, debating what to do next.
The branches of an overhead tree behind the camper swayed. Pierce’s rifle found the tree and the search continued. Out of nowhere, a figure leaped from a high branch to the camper. Pierce fired as soon as the figure was stable. Jodi joined him, firing. Together, they followed the figure with their gunfire as the figure leaped to another tree, then other, away from the area.
“It’s her!” he screamed. “Come on!”
Now that he found his target, he was ready for the chase and ready for this to be over and done with. The fear he felt was mild compared to his excitement. Adrenaline pumped through him and gave him a strength and brashness he hadn’t felt before. Pierce was fearless. He ran in the direction Zombie Mom took, unaware if his companion followed. The creature was his sole focus and he aimed to catch and kill it.
Pierce got a burst of speed and sprinted through the woods in hot pursuit. He stopped, aimed, fired, and then took off running again. On and on, he ran, stopping once more to take a shot at the overhead zombie that leaped through the trees.
Ahead, a clearing. Pierce saw it and got excited. Mommy zombie would have to fall to the ground, there were no more trees nearby. He stopped and dropped to a knee to better aim. Seconds later, he heard a huffing and puffing and turned to see Jodi on one knee. She aimed at the last tree and like he, waited.
“Fire!” yelled Pierce.
They opened up on the zombie in the high tree. The zombie sailed to the ground. Instead of running, it howled and rushed in their direction. Each fired continuously as the zombie darted to escape their gunfire. The zombie leaped over them and continued running. With a careful aim, Pierce breathed in and let it out slowly, easing all tension in his body. He became one with his weapon and with a single click, sent a solitary bullet into the back of Zombie Mom’s head. She let out her last scream before falling to the earth, dead.
“Damn, that bitch was tough,” said Jodi.
“I hear you.”
“Why? Why would the last one be so hard to kill?”
“What?” he rose and extended her his hand.
“She was hard to bring down. If anything, wouldn’t you expect Miriam to be the hardest to take out? She was the first.”
Pierce gave it its due thought. He spread his arms wide. Jodi gave him a confused look. “The open space. If Miriam were here, we might never have dropped her. Thank God for closed-in spaces.”
“Amen brother.”
They started their long journey back to give Sergeant Moore a full report.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Fanmer