Dead Ones

Chapter 16: Horde

Night came swiftly. I rallied with the people and we packed up everything we had looted from the town. I mounted the armored vehicle and fired up the engine. We had a few less vehicles than what we had started with, as we had lost a few people fighting. I revved the engine and then let the vehicle fly out of the open gate. We drove down the road at a quick pace. It was around early morning when we left. The decision was made that attempting something right at the fall of night would be a bad idea because the enemy would most likely be anticipating action. We waited for the early morning before the sun had risen. Waiting until morning gave the people from the town a little extra time to rest. It was a good decision in my opinion. Our help to the Refuge wouldn't matter if we couldn't make it there. By the time we arrived, the sun was rising. The surroundings formerly clothed in shadow were illuminated. We passed the road sign with the bodies. 'Nearly there' I thought to myself. I was fully armored and all of my weapons were reloaded, ready for whatever we encountered. Or so I had thought. Hundreds, no, thousands of the dead were roaming around the community walls. I had never seen so many of them in the same place before. If we were going to break through them, I was the one to take care of that. I pressed the accelerator harder. The speed of the vehicle was climbing. From cruising at a steady forty miles per hour, it increased steadily. Fifty, sixty, seventy miles per hour. It evened out at about seventy five, which was as high I could get it to go. The other vehicles behind me slowed. I looked in the mirror. The vehicle behind me had stopped, stopping the caravan. The radio sputtered to life from a friendly channel. "Grim! Are you out of your fucking mind?!" John shouted over the radio. "Yes," I said calmly. I stiffened in my seat and braced myself. The vehicle slammed into the horde which was slowly funneling in through a large gap in the wall. blood instantly coated the windshield. Chunks of the living dead rolled over the vehicle as it flattened and bounced over some of the others. The vehicle collided with something that brought it to a sudden stop. The airbags detonated. When they deflated, I regained my composure and burst through the hatch in the roof of the vehicle. I climbed on top of it. There was the upper half of a dead one on the roof of the Hummer with me. It was reaching for me hopelessly. I kicked it off of the roof into the mass of living bodies below me. The Hummer had lodged itself into the hole in the wall, cutting off the flow of the dead from entering. I signaled for the others to follow me. None of the vehicles budged. "If you can clear a path for us, I can lead them in," John said on the radio. 'To hell with that' I thought to myself. If I could regroup with survivors within the walls we could join with the caravan and take on the army of the dead together. I turned for one last glance at the caravan before jumping from the roof of the Hummer and into the community. There was the occasional gunshot coming from all over the Refuge. There were undoubtedly survivors, and I was going to find them. I switched to the channel David previously contacted me on and spoke into the radio. "Hey David, are you still alive?" I shouted into it. Some of the dead turned their attention from pushing deeper into the community to attacking me. I shouldered my rifle and fired a few quick bursts of shots at them. There were more of the dead than bullets in the entire armory it seemed. "Yeah, I'm good. Where are you?" he shouted back through the radio. "Main entrance. I plugged the hole in the wall so no more of the dead heads can get in," I said. I fired off more shots. One of the dead got up in my face. I cracked the stock of the rifle across its face. It fell to the ground, but stumbled to try and stand once more. I shot it in the head to prevent it from doing so. "Come to the barn near the stables," he said. The barn? We had a barn? "Where is that?" I asked. "Do you know where the farming area is in the community?" he asked me. "Yeah, I walked past it to get to the residential area," I responded. "Okay, look for the big red building that looks like a barn. Duh," he said. I emptied the rest of my rounds in my rifle into some of the nearby dead ones, clearing myself a small path I could sprint through. The bullets ripped through their frail fleshy bodies. They staggered, but were not slowed. I threw my rifle to my side on the sling and drew my machete. I began to sprint through the crowd, dodging around the masses. Occasionally, I slammed the heavy blade into the skull of one of the dead that prevented me from passing by. One grabbed hold of me. This one was strong. It seemed rather fresh. It held my arms at my sides, preventing me from using my weapon. It lunged forward, attempting to bite me. I dodged backward, then brought my head forward, hard. The metallic surface of my mask collided with its skull. The skull shattered and it looked shocked at what had just happened. I freed my hand with the machete and plunged it tip first into its soft forehead. I began my sprint again. I entered the area of the farm in the Refuge. I noticed some of the dead were grouping around a particular building and I decided to take a detour. They were pounding on the door of a supply shed. From inside I heard someone screaming. I drew my pistol and fired one shot through a window on the side of the building. I holstered the pistol and dove headfirst through the window, crashing into a shelf on the inside. I was disarmed from my machete, which landed a few feet to my right, near the door. On my left, there was a woman, a food preparation worker, cowering in the corner with a kitchen knife.  One of the dead slowly approached her. Not having time to retrieve my machete, I grabbed the nearest pointed object, which was a pitchfork. I charged the dead one. The woman screamed. "Head down!" I shouted. I thrust the prongs of the pitchfork into the lower back of the dead one. Its torso separated from its legs, which fell to the floor lazily. I rammed the fork into the wall, supporting the dead one against it. It turned its head as far back as it could to look at me. Its shoulders and elbows bent at inhuman angles to try and reach me. I braced the handle of the tool and brought my knee into it hard. It didn't fracture how I wanted it to. I repeated this action, snapping the wooden handle in two. I flipped the pointed end of the stick to be downward in my hand and I plunged it with all my might into the back of the struggling decapitated corpse's head. It stopped moving at once, arms ceasing in their reach. I helped the trembling woman to her feet. "Are you hurt?" I asked. "No, I'm completely fine. Thanks," she said. "What happened here?" I asked here. "Around mid day there accumulated this massive number of the dead around the walls. It sounded like thousands of voices whispering at once. Later in the day when the whispering was at its loudest, there was this huge explosion by the gate, and the dead poured in by the hundreds," she told me. This was undoubtedly the work of the Hive. Who else was crazy enough to weaponize these things? Well, besides myself and possibly John, that is. I still had a sliver of humanity in tact. Now this woman and I were safe, but how to get out when all exits were surrounded by the dead?...