“I did knives with your partner,” I told him. “I wish you’d left.”
In one fluid motion I pushed my rifle onto my back and grabbed a grenade. I pulled the pin and ran to the Seal’s location as I pulled on his waistband I deposited the grenade, then I quickly grabbed the chain around his neck. Zombies were vying for position around him as I pushed away. A mash of zombie and human parts burst under the assault of the grenade’s shrapnel. Unluckily for me, I was in the midst of the fallout zone. Hot pieces of anatomy rained down. I was covered in the remains of multiple zombies and at least one man.
Some sporadic gunfire erupted from around me after the explosion, but nothing close. It seemed to be merely a reflexive action. Now that I was paying attention, I could hear the hum of the fence as electric current ran through it.
The fence was six-feet high and there wasn’t a tree anywhere near it. I began to rip shirts off the zombies nearest me, they didn’t care and seemed happy to oblige. I wrapped my feet as best I could, hoping that I would have enough insulation, then I sought out a stout zombie which in this case appeared to be a woman of East German descent. She was only about five feet tall, mostly round and looked like she could bench a Beetle.
“Nice to make your acquaintance,” I told her back. She wasn’t properly couched in etiquette. “You’ll do.”
I pushed the back of her knees until she fell to them, then I climbed up. I was now getting quite possibly the first zombie piggy back ride. I wasn’t thrilled with having my knees next to her mouth, but after one failed attempt with her thick arms to wave me away she completely forgot about me as she stood back up, my added weight not hampering or hindering her in the least. I thought this could be a boon for parents everywhere, I could make millions! How many times had we as parents been ridden into the ground from the insistent wishes of our offspring to give them rides, even when their age and weight had begun to exceed our limits? Now, I could sell zombies fitted with saddles that would take the kiddies for rides indefinitely. ZTI could become a global entity (Zombie Transportation Incorporated). Our dependence on foreign oil would be over. They’d have to invent a new monetary term for how rich I’d be.
I would have kept thinking along those lines if I wasn’t receiving a tingling across my thighs and ass. Greta (that’s what I was calling her) was now about two zombies away from the fence, her body was slowly taking on the rigidity of her peers in front of her. I placed my hand on the top of her dirt and oil laden head and balanced my weight so that I could stand. I was thankful the night was still mostly dark, dawn was approaching but still it would be difficult to pick me out of the rest of the crowd, the longer I stayed standing on her shoulders, the better my odds of getting shot at by either side though.
I didn’t feel any electricity as I stood tall on her shoulders—only wavering once, luckily she seemed fairly rooted to the ground at this point. I stepped on the man in front of her—at this point I had a slight tingling—and then, as I stepped on the zombie actually touching the fence, I felt what seemed like pins and needles traversing up my calves. It was uncomfortable at the moment, but I could see it becoming debilitating if I stayed there long enough. My first thought was to place a foot on the fence and jump, but if the current increased and I lost motor function chances were I’d fall back into the zombie stew. The man’s head was at most a foot away from the fence and my feet were less than six inches below the top of it. Even if I were drunk, the jump shouldn’t be a problem.
I think the pressure as I pushed off broke the zombie’s collar bone. He didn’t yell in protest, so I took that as a good sign. I was happy the ground on the other side had been moved recently as it was softer than normal because I had hit it pretty hard. My knees were already suspect at best, and I was happy not to give them any more reason to fail me now. I was a couple of feet away from a ditch that was at least six feet across and peppered with all manner of spikes protruding from the ground; the stink of kerosene was heavy from where I stood. I won’t lie, I was dismayed that my approach was going unnoticed.
The unit that I had dispatched of would have easily made it into my brother’s home and then what? I decided not to dwell on it, nothing fruitful could be gained from it. Twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have even paused at the gap I had to bridge, right now it may as well have been double its width. Eventually I was going to figure out I was far from an ordinary human…but that moment wasn’t one of them.
“What are the odds there’s a minefield?” I asked. “Probably pretty damned good.” Super deluxe model or not, I was confident that a bomb would send me on my way.
***
“Wait, you’re saying this, what the hell was his name? Buker? Buker fellow took out the entire team?” Kong was asking the out-of-breath Army Ranger, Hank O’Reilly.
“He said he had dusted the other two, then told me and John that we could leave and never come back or die.”
“So was the explosion this Buker guy or John?” Kong asked.
“Oh, I can assure you it was your Navy Seal,” Tommy said, seemingly peering through the trees to the Talbot household.
“How can you be so sure?” Kong asked him.
“Because it was Michael Talbot,” Eliza said, striding up to the circle. “And apparently nothing short of the Rapture is going to take him off this earth. It makes no difference, now at least I know where he is and the whole lot of them can die simultaneously.”
“I just lost three well-trained men, some of my best,” Kong said turning to Eliza, anger flushing his cheeks.
“Perhaps you should have had a better screening technique,” Tomas said smiling. “Maybe asked each of them what side they were on. Michael most likely would have told you the truth.”
Eliza nodded in agreement. “I imagine he would have…right before he killed you.”
Kong didn’t seem so convinced that the man that had called himself Buker would have been able to take him out, but he had just killed three Special Forces men and was still at large.
“If you had doubts you should have voiced them before we left,” Eliza told him. “Now organize another team.”
“Ten this time…that should be sufficient,” she said.
“Sufficient for what?” Kong asked, trying valiantly to keep his cool. He knew Eliza would have no qualms about eliminating him and putting someone else at the top. He didn’t even consider himself a pawn; he was the board upon which the actual game was being played.
Hank hadn’t left Kong’s side since he got back and already he knew that legend of Buker or Talbot would be spreading across his men like wildfire. He had yet to figure out quite how that phenomenon worked, and something inside him told him he didn’t have the time left to figure it out either.
***
“Can’t stay here, sun is going to be up soon and I’ll be stuck in dead man’s land. And me being covered in gore like this, someone in that house is going to think I’m a zombie and that I somehow got past the fence.”
Minefield or not, I had to leave the spot I was becoming rooted to. I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me how easily I traversed the gap, but it did. Now I was just hoping I wasn’t smack dab in the middle of a minefield and everything would be A-Okay. I was within fifteen feet of the deck which was a good ten feet off the ground. I was happy and slightly dismayed to see that the stairs had been removed. I did a once over around the bottom part of the house. There was no way in, it was completely shuttered off with steel plating. I looked up at the decking overhead.
“I should have brought Greta,” I said. “Okay let’s do the math, I’m almost six feet, give or take, mostly give…but whatever. Then if I outstretch my arms, add another three-ish feet, I really need to only jump up about a foot and I can grab the edge of the deck. Subtract from that, I’m a fortyish white guy and I’m still fucked. Wait…
