The bottom of Brendon’s truck bed looked like a swimming pool of blood, BT was cradling her husband, the tears streaming down his face matched the crimson flowing freely from Mike’s chest.
“Oh my God!” Tracy wailed. Her truck was skimming into the outer ranks of zombies in a desperate bid to be with her husband at the end. For that’s what it was, nobody could lose that much blood and survive.
Tracy was alongside Brendon’s truck trying desperately to look over Nicole and into the bed of the truck.
Nicole was screaming. She couldn’t hear anything over the hell fire from the military guns. A zombie crashed over the hood of the truck, Tracy instinctively hit the brakes as the zombie slid back down. The trailing hummer caught up, the corporal was bellowing at her. She couldn’t hear him but his gestures were universal and you didn’t have to be a lip reader to understand ‘GO, GO GO!’
She wanted to stop she wanted to hold her husband one more time. BT’s face was towards the sky, he was yelling something to the heavens.
“NO!!!” Tracy screamed. Tommy had thrown up. A caustic aroma mix of vomit and strawberry Pop-Tart.
“What the fuck is going on!” Nicole screamed. “Pull up mom, pull up!”
Tracy gunned the engine. BT had put Mike’s lifeless body down and was reaching through the rear glass. Brendon was slumped over the steering wheel, his foot lodged on the gas pedal. BT had moved his body to the side so that he could steer the truck. The truck had rammed into the rear of the lead truck, the gunner swung around to realize the new threat.
He thumped the roof of the transport letting the driver know about the new development, and then resumed his place as judge, jury and extreme executioner. BT had regained relative control of Brendon’s truck. The lead hummer had slowed and allowed itself to be used as a braking mechanism. Speeders were keeping pace as the four trucks raced alongside the mob of dead. The lead driver veered away to make distance.
Tracy could feel the lost seconds as they slid away, like so much sand in an hourglass. Over untended fields the trucks careened as the hounds of hell were chomping at their heels. Mike’s hollow body bounced around, more than once he rose as high as the sidewalls and threatened to be tossed into the North Dakota wilderness. Ten minutes later the lead hummer had finally come to a stop. Tracy had nearly dropped the transmission when she shoved the gearbox into park.
His body was so cold as she hopped into the back of the truck and felt for a pulse. There wasn’t one. A small blue frozen smile was splashed across his lips. Nicole was torn between her father and her fiancée. One of the Marines had come from the first hummer carrying a medical bag. He stopped briefly to check Brendon, and then slowly shook his head. Nicole fell to her knees. Her keening so high that it was barely audible. BT screamed in rage.
He came over to Mike, Tracy wanted to run away, she couldn’t handle that all knowing and death certifying shake of his head. The corpsman was in no apparent rush when he stepped up into the truck. Nobody could be the color of blue that Mike was and be alive.
Tracy pulled Mike away from the corpsman. “NO! You will not tell me he is dead!” Tracy screamed.
“Ma'am let me see if I can help him.” The corpsman told her, though even he didn’t sound believable to himself.
Tracy relented. The corpsman spent considerably more time than he should have to pronounce someone dead. “Corporal Beckett! Bring the morphine and a blanket! Quickly!” The corpsman shouted.
“He’s alive?” Tracy whispered.
“What’s going on?” BT asked through the veil of tears.
Tracy hushed him, fearful that his words might break the tenuous grip on life that Mike clung to.
The corpsman had ripped Mike’s shirt open. Tracy had momentarily become fearful that Mike would die from the cold although that seemed the least of his problems as she looked at the bolt from the crossbow that had punched a hole damn near straight through. The force of the impact had created a melon sized black and blue mark that radiated broken blood vessels in all directions. She wouldn’t swear it on a bible but she thought she saw the arrow rise a fraction of an inch, though she couldn’t tell if it was from Mike breathing or the buffeting wind.
The wound had stopped bleeding, congealed blood of the dead or just plain empty neither symptom a good sign. “Corporal NOW! If this man dies, you're next!”
“Sir, yes sir.” The corporal shouted from beside the truck he cautiously handed over all the supplies asked for.
“He’s alive?” Tracy asked again, still not sure why the corpsman was taking the time to administer pain killer to a corpse.
The truck rocked slightly as BT extracted himself from the scene. BT pulled Brendon out from the truck and laid him gently onto the ground. BT knelt beside Brendon. “Thank you.” He said softly as he covered the body up with one of the blankets that the corporal had brought over. BT grabbed Nicole they sat together like that for long minutes. Long after, Mike’s IV-laced body was placed onto a stretcher and placed in the lead hummer, even after Brendon’s still form was taken and placed in the second hummer, blood dripped in a puddle from the tailgate of Brendon’s truck. Tracy was in shock as another Marine placed her into the rear of the hummer with her husband.
“Miss.” One of the Marines asked Nicole. “Do you want to ride in the hummer?”
Nicole looked up from the ground, cradled in BT’s arms. She let the Marine take her hand and help her into the military truck.
“Speeders!” Travis yelled.
A wall of zombies was running full tilt across the fields. “Mount up!” A sergeant who had been smoking a cigar said from the driver’s side of the lead hummer. “Private how much ammo you got?” The sergeant asked the gunner on the second humvee.
“Couple hundred rounds max.” The private shouted back.
“Richmond, you?” The sergeant asked the gunner on his own truck.
“Seven, Sarge.” Richmond answered back.
“Seven hundred?” The sergeant asked for clarification.
“Seven.” Richmond said. “Just seven.” He added for clarification.
“Alright let’s get the fuck outta here.” The sergeant bellowed. “Big man, you want a ride or do you want to drive that truck?”
BT didn’t want to do shit except sit on his ass and wait for the end of the earth, which according to the zombies was roughly four minutes away. BT got up and without answering got behind the wheel of the Ford.
“Guess that answers that.” The sergeant said.
Travis and Tommy hopped into the Ford with BT. Henry stayed with Mike and Tracy, Justin was still under the influence of some heavy sedatives and had missed everything. For seemingly endless hours the trucks traveled across a ghost land. Nobody spoke in the Ford as each person was lost in their own thoughts, trying with great difficulty to reconcile the events that had just happened.
“Is this worth it?” Travis asked of BT.
BT looked over, his eyes burning. “Well you are your father’s son.” And he turned back to the road.
Long minutes passed, the road blurred past. “That didn’t really answer my question BT.”
“No, it sure didn’t. Before today I would have given you a different answer.”
“And now?” Travis prodded.
“Now...now I’m not so sure. I just watched two people I care for die and a third who is nowhere near out of the woods. I’m no philosopher, but I am a religious man. I know that eventually every man has to meet his maker in his own way. It’s what you do while you’re alive that defines how that meeting is gonna go. I cannot imagine that there is a God who wishes for us to merely survive, we would be no better than sheep. We are left behind for a reason, Travis. It is up to us and others like us to right this great wrong. Some will fall along the way. It is the price that must be paid, sacrifice of the ultimate kind. Without the blood of the righteous, the wicked cannot be smote.”
“You’re not going to go all Reverend Sharpeton on me? Are you?”
BT nearly lost control of the truck his laughs shaking him to the core. “Holy shit if it was ever in doubt whose son you were, you slammed that door shut.”
CHAPTER TWO -
“Yes, they got away.”
“How is that possible, you pathetic human?”
Durgan fell to his knees as it felt as if someone had laid his scalp open and was dragging razor blades across his exposed brain. The pain was terrifyingly blinding. He could not even begin to comprehend how to answer his master. Blood began to flow freely from his nose from whatever form of psychic torture was being administered.
“Please.” He said weakly. He buried his head into the snow hoping that would diminish the shards of glass rattling around in his brain bucket. It didn’t.
Eliza wanted to crush his feeble brain. It would have been no harder than smashing an egg. She hated the fact that she had to rely on a human but she was not yet strong enough to pursue Talbot and The Other. She released her death grip on Durgan and he gasped in great gulps of cold refreshing air.
“That is the last time you will fail me.” She said directly into his mind.
Durgan could tell that Eliza had turned her attention away from him. The feeling was both distressingly lonely and agonizingly wonderful. He stood up, wincing, his missing leg still pained him as he gripped the plastic coated prosthetic. His other leg itched uncomfortably from whatever Eliza had done to him to make him heal so rapidly. She had given him power, not enough, but it helped him to walk months ahead of what the most optimistic orthopedic surgeon would have set for a timetable. Blood flowed rapidly from his nose. He absently brushed it away with his cuff. The fat droplets fell to the snow covered ground and were quickly descended upon by the zombies. Durgan was fearful that with so many chomping teeth close by he would be inadvertently bitten. "Vermin, I hate being around these things, just one more reason I’m going to enjoy killing you and your entire family, Talbot!” The zombies eyed Durgan greedily. More than one looked like they were a moment away from taking a bite of his flesh. Only Eliza was keeping them at bay and she was hundreds of miles away. Durgan tried his best to not break out into a run as he pushed past the zombies and stood as close to the burning house as he could to regain some heat. The zombies followed him closely, trying desperately to break through whatever was gripping them and tear the warm meat carrier to bloody, ragged, tasty shreds.
CHAPTER THREE -
“Clear!” The medic shouted as he applied the defibrillator paddles to Mike for the fifth time. Mike’s lifeless form arched 6 inches off the stretcher. The monitor still blazed a bright flat line, the monotonous wail of its siren more piercing than the worst alarm clock.
Tracy and Nicole embraced each other as they watched. “What are you doing?” Tracy asked the medic as he turned the monitor and the paddles off.
“Ma'am it's been seven minutes.” He replied as if that explained everything, and ultimately it did.
“You will not give up on me!” Tracy screamed.
The medic didn’t know if she was talking to him or her husband. He figured it out though when she slapped him.
“Ma'am!” The medic said. “He’s dead!” He yelled hoping the volume would solidify his answer.
“He’s fucking dead, when I say he’s fucking dead!” She yelled. “Hit him again.”
The medic thought she was probably insane, but the best way to prove someone’s insanity is to show her the light, so to speak. Against his better judgment he sparked the paddles back up. ‘Great’ He thought to himself. ‘We get to ride the rest of the way back to camp with the smell of burnt flesh, that oughta make the MRE’s go down better.
“Clear.” The medic said without any sense of urgency.
Mike’s body arched up again and struck back down with a solid thud.
“You see? He’s dead.” The medic said trying to put as much sympathy into his words as he could, but after seeing so much death it was becoming a more difficult emotion to muster.
“Hit him again.” Tracy growled through gritted teeth.
The medic couldn’t stop himself. “He’s going to start to burn.”
“So help me you little FUCK, you hit him again now or I’ll take those paddles to your balls!”
The sergeant turned from his driving. “You’d better get to it Murphy, I think she’d do just that.” He said half laughing.
Murphy was nearly in shock as he said the word “Clear,” for the seventh time.
“Seven times a charm.” The sergeant said without looking back.
Mike’s body didn’t so much arch as it did spasm, as if the hand of God himself was thrusting his life back into his disabled and broken body. The medic had never taken his eyes off of Tracy as he had administered the charge, fearful she would grab the paddles and do just as she had threatened. “He’s dead.” Murphy the medic said with a hint of fear.
“Mike?” Tracy asked as she pushed past Murphy. “Mike?”
The medic looked down to the fluttering eyes of a cadaver. “No fucking way.” He said as he turned the monitor back on, fearful that they had brought a zombie into their midst.
The sergeant had an inkling of what might be going on. “Get the fuck away from him!” He shouted as he pulled his 1911 out of his holster. The transport had pitched to the side as the sergeant slammed on the brakes. The sergeant's gun was pressed to Mike’s head the trigger half depressed just as the monitor sounded to life with the telltale beating of a human heart. “Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.” The sergeant said as he holstered his weapon and got the hummer moving again, no more out of sorts than if he had found some extra change in his pockets.
“He can’t be alive.” The medic said clearly confused.
“You’d be amazed.” Tracy said as she held Mike’s head.
“I already am.” Murphy said in all honesty.
Murphy muted the volume on the monitor when it appeared that his patient was in no imminent threat of dying again, at least not on his watch. He could however not stop watching the green line as it made its way across the screen, not out of caution but out of awe. “He was dead for seven minutes.” He mumbled to himself. “He shouldn’t have enough brain function left to beat his heart. Do you mind?” Murphy asked Tracy, as he pulled a penlight out of his pocket.’’
Tracy was momentarily fearful of what he might discover and was inclined to say no, but nodded in ascension instead. Murphy reached over and gently pulled an eyelid back, shining the light into first one then the other eye. Both pupils reacted.
“I don’t understand.” Murphy said to no one.
“What’s going on?” The sergeant asked as he pulled a cigar out of his breast pocket. “Anyone mind?” He asked as he showed the cigar to everyone. He bit the end off and lit it before anyone had a chance to respond.
“This motherf…should be dead.” Murphy said. “Or at least brain dead. But his heart is beating strong and his pupils are dilating normally. He’s lost somewhere in the neighborhood of half his blood. He was clinically dead for damn near ten minutes and for all intents and purposes this guy could be asleep. Everything I’ve ever learned tells me that this guy should be dead.”
“I guess you need to learn some more.” The sergeant said as he took a big puff from his cigar. “He must have a lot worth living for,” the sergeant said as he looked over to Nicole and then Tracy. The medic shook his head again and not for the last time either.
CHAPTER FOUR -
The hummer rocketed towards its destination. Nicole had long since fallen asleep, her mind’s way of coping with her immense grief. Tracy cradled Mike’s head. His eyes rapidly moving below the closed eyelids threatened to open on more than one occasion but never did. The arrow bolt stood like a blunted tree branch out of Mike. She had wanted to just rip the vile invader from his body but she knew the futility of that endeavor.
“We have a great surgeon at the base.” Murphy told Tracy as he saw her looking at the arrow. “But I bet if we gave Mike another day or two he’d just ta
ke it out on his own.”
Tracy half laughed half cried at his words. “Sorry about the whole balls thing.” She said.
“No, no, you were right.” Murphy said.
“How much further?” She asked Murphy.
Sergeant Stanton answered for him. “Another hour at our current speed.”
Fifty caliber rounds broke the silence of rubber meeting roadway.
“Bandits,” came over scratchily through the MUCS radio receiver. “Seven, no eight cars and trucks bearing down on us. Multiple gun fire, we’re taking hits back here.”
“Shit they must be desperate if they’re attacking military.” Sergeant Stanton said as he ground his cigar into the ashtray. “Base Custer, Base Custer, this is Rover seven, can you read?”
“Custer huh.” Tracy said. “Couldn’t think of anything better?”
“Seemed appropriate at the time.” The sergeant said. “And now it just stuck.”
“Well I hope for all of our sakes it’s not really the last stand.” Tracy finished.
“Rover seven, this is Base Custer, haven’t heard from you in a while, what is your status?” Came the even scratchier, static laced voice.
“Had a bit of a detour.” The sergeant said summing up the battle of Carol’s homestead. “We could use a little assistance Base, we’re on route 80 mile marker 94, just outside of town and we’ve acquired some company. We’ve got eight militant vehicles chasing us.”
“Roger that, Eagle two is in flight, eta 12 minutes.”
“Roger that.” The sergeant said calmly.
“Twelve minutes?” Murphy said incredulously “We’ll never be able to out run them for that long.”
Tracy was looking questioningly back and forth at the conversation. “Murphy answered her unasked question. “ A hummer could climb a wall if it had too, but as far as speed goes, a not so well trained athlete on a ten speed could go faster than we could.”