His eyes were red-rimmed. “He’s all I’ve got left.”
“Yeah, and all those people you were going to kill upstairs, they’re all I’ve got left. Get out.”
He did without any further words, hefting his brother up over his shoulder. He brushed by as he left. Within a few more minutes all of the dead raiders were now permanent fixtures with the ground. The men were looking at the gap and the zombies, trying to figure out how they were going to get back across. BT and I watched as one of them actually turned and began to come back. I raised my rifle up and he turned back to the zombies.
Steel Balls and the man who had turned around began to talk rapidly, their voices rising to a peak. It looked like Steel Balls won. I could see Stubby begging, his hands were up in the air, he was shaking his head back and forth and trying to scoot back as fast as he could. Steel kicked Stubby in his bad foot. Stubby stopped moving immediately as his scream of pain pierced the silence. He paid no attention as Steel Balls moved and grabbed the chain off his neck.
“Help me, please!” Stubby begged.
I went back inside; BT stayed out a moment longer before joining me. I grabbed a bucket and some water out of the utility closet and had already started cleaning up stains that would never vanish.
“What happened out there, man?” BT asked me.
I looked up from my scrubbing. “What would you have done differently?”
“At least I would have left them the vials,” BT said, rubbing his face with his hands like he was trying to scour away the grime of the event.
“I’m going to walk you through my thoughts.”
“Go on,” he said, pulling up a folding chair that I did not think was up to the task of holding him suspended in space.
“They weren’t here to borrow sugar, BT.”
“I get that, Mike, I do, but that’s cold-blooded.”
“I’m not done.” BT motioned for me to continue. “I let them leave intact, they go right back to Eliza, regroup and try again. She’s not just going to pat them on the shoulders and say, ‘Nice try fellas’. Maybe we stop them again, maybe we don’t. I’m not willing to gamble the lives of those people upstairs at all, no matter how good the odds may seem in our favor. Money is gambled, not lives. Now, as an added bonus, we have seven more vials of Eliza’s brew that we can give to people upstairs. Because when our perimeter is overrun…which it will be…”
BT’s eyes got wide.
“When the zombies get to the house, seven more people upstairs will now have a chance to blend in and maybe get the fuck away from this death house. Seven more of the people we love were just given an extra chance to hold on. And if the dip wads outside had played their cards right, I’m pretty sure the two vials would have been enough to protect all of them. Sure, they would have to know each other a little better than they may have wanted to, but they would have survived. And already they’re turning on each other. I doubt two of them make it back. They’re killing each other. They would have had no problem killing us. I say fuck ‘em, you should, too,” I told him as I got back to scooping brain and scrubbing blood.
The folding chair sighed in relief as BT heaved himself to his feet. He squeezed my shoulder as he went by. “Is there another sponge?” he asked, pointing to the utility room.
“Enough to make it through the apocalypse.”
“I hope so.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The Backyard
“What now?” Xander, the silent one of the remaining three live men said as they stared across the abyss.
“Well, near as I can tell,” Steve, aka Steel Balls, began, “we have two vials and three people, and since I’m holding one and so is Chaz, it looks like you’re odd man out.”
“That’s not right, man, if we stay together we can make it,” Xander complained.
“Not a chance,” Steve said as he jumped the gap. The zombies in the front row could not yield fast enough as Steve struck chest to chest. He bounced back, grabbing onto the zombie’s tattered shirt pulling them both back into the pit.
He pulled the zombie to the side in a desperate attempt to avoid the deadly steel spikes. It worked to a point as a barb cleaved him on the left side of his abdomen. His hand clenching the vial opened to brace his body to stop any further damage. The zombie came straight down flush on the spike; it broke through his sternum and impaled him completely. The duo were locked head to foot, and without the vial to protect him, the zombie unaffected from the damage to his mid-section began to feed.
Steve started to pull frantically, his muscle and skin stretching violently as he tried to rip himself away sideways from the spike before the zombie could break through the denim pants he wore. “Xander, help me, man,” Steve asked frantically.
He was crying out loud as he tried to sever through three inches of his being. The zombie was making short work of the heavy material. Steve was kicking his leg so that the zombie could not seek purchase; he was losing the battle. Steve’s skin split with a wet rip from the pole just as the zombie took a small ribbon of meat from his calf.
“Oh fuck, man!” he yelled as he scrambled to get away from the zombie. One hand was clenched over the wound in his side. The kerosene fire below was threatening to ignite his shoes and the zombies at the top, beginning to realize he was fair game, started to walk into the fire to get at him.
“Xander, Chaz, please help me,” he begged.
Chaz was lost in the depths of his mourning and barely cognizant of the happenings in front of him. Xander had come to the conclusion that if Steve started to burn he wouldn’t even piss on him.
“Come on,” Xander said to Chaz as he led the brother away and to the other side of the yard where the steel framing to the foot bridge still remained. Steve screamed out four more times before either the fire or the zombies devoured him.
Xander made sure he had a handful of Chaz’ shirt at all times as he led the man out of the zombies. The zombies pressed tightly as they passed, sometimes not yielding their spot even after Xander walked into them. He kept his head down thinking that somehow, by not making eye contact, he would not illicit a challenge. The zombies were within tongue range almost constantly and Xander had enough wet marks to prove that they were tasting the validity of the food. He was happy they weren’t like sharks that bit first to determine taste.
Xander almost cried in relief when they made it through the brunt of the zombies and were stopped by a guard.
“Oh thank God,” he said nearly collapsing.
“What happened to the rest of you guys?” the guard asked.
“Dead,” was his one word reply.
“Holy shit, come on follow me. Kong gave us all orders that if any of you stumbled back to come and meet him personally without the woman.” Nobody wanted to use Eliza’s name, as if to speak it was to invoke her presence. And nobody wanted that cold beauty next to them. “Tell Kong I’ve got two coming,” the guard said, speaking into a small two-way radio.
“Roger that, bring them out to Dowboin road and have them wait,” the man on the other end said.
“Chaz, man, you alright?” the guard asked.
“I need to bury my brother,” he answered through a mourning haze.
“We will, man, we will. You want some help carrying him?” the guard asked.
“It’s just for a little while longer I can do it,” Chaz said.
It was another ten minutes through their circuitous route that the men found themselves on the roadway that led into the Talbot compound.
Kong was waiting impatiently. “You can go back to your post,” he told the guard. “What happened?” he asked when the guard was out of range.
