The horde surrounded the gazebo, cutting off any retreat we might have had and the high walls prevented them from hitting us from behind. All we needed to do was wait for them to come to us.
And come they did. The first one to cross the barrier was a small female, probably a teenager, with ripped jeans and halter top. Her mottled grey skin glinted in the sun, and her dead blue eyes stared at me with unquenchable hunger. I split her skull and, picking up the dead body, threw it on the pile, knocking back two others who were clumsily making their way across the corpses.
Figuring I was going to need another weapon, I pulled my knife, waiting for the next ghoul to come near while I watched Charlie dispatch a man who was completely naked, his pallid skin streaked with claw marks and bites. The body was kicked into the barrier as it fell, the man’s big butt pointing towards us when it finished falling. I let out a grim chuckle to be joined by Charlie’s soft laugh. It’s not often the dead moon you, especially after you’ve killed them.
I kept the image of my baby boy in my mind and I fought for him. I would not allow the world to come to this, where the last few humans make a stand against the coming wave of death. My son would not inherit this world.
As I killed, once again I had to restrain myself from charging headlong into the fray and killing my enemies as they killed me. The ancient fire of battle burned in my veins and I welcomed it as I welcomed the horde with taunts and sneers. “Come on, you witless fucks. Come and die. I’ll set you free.” Beside me Charlie began to growl low in his chest. I recognized it as his battle cry. Let the harvest of the dead begin. “Come on!” I raged at the dead faces staring at me.
The dead began to advance and Charlie and I killed them. We killed those who came to the barrier and those who tried to climb over it. We piled the bodies up until we were crushing skulls that peered at us from behind other corpses. We fought until our arms were leaden. We fought until I broke the handle on my pickaxe and had to use a shortened grip on splintered wood. We fought until Charlie broke a tomahawk handle, leaving him to fight with a single ‘hawk and his nine-inch knife. We killed the owners of the grasping, clawed hands blackened with old blood. We killed former mothers, fathers, and their children. We killed white collar workers, blue collar workers, and everyone in between. We fought until the pile of the dead fell forward from the push behind, and we retreated to the middle of the stairs, killing those zombies who crawled towards us, single-minded of purpose.
Charlie and I were covered in zombie gore up to our necks and still we fought. As I killed, a line from an ancient legend came to mind, describing a battle between a hero and a horde of advancing enemies; a hero who died so his companions could live… “He held the bridge at Gallerbru.” I idly wondered if what we did here today would ever be remembered as I speared another zombie in the eye with my knife, killing him and slamming my pickaxe into the skull of another, who had grasped my shirt and was pulling me towards him for a bite.
Inevitably, we began to tire. What took only one hit before was now taking two, and the horde pressed forward, causing Charlie and I to retreat higher up the stairs. We pushed the bodies back as we killed them, trying to slow down the horde, but they pressed on. Charlie and I had to retreat to the top of the stairs and we left bodies three and four deep all the way up.
We were getting into a desperate situation. If the zombies pressed us any further, then they would be able to get around us and then it would be over. We could not retreat any farther.
We fought harder, trying to open a space where we could push back, but we had been fighting for so long that we could barely lift our arms. The only thing keeping us going was sheer willpower and the determination not to become one of the diseased husks that slobbered for our blood. I kicked at the ones coming up, tumbling them onto the zombies behind them, but they crawled back up as quickly as we kicked them away.
“We may need an exit!” Charlie yelled at me as he put down another ghoul.
“Nowhere to go!” I yelled back. “If they get farther up, they’re all around us!” I jammed my knife into a small girl that tried to sneak up under my defenses. I picked up her now completely lifeless body and hurled it the horde, knocking down several of them.
“What about the roof?” Charlie asked, his hand around the throat of a snapping zombie.
“Maybe we could make it, but we would need several seconds.” I said, punching a teenage zombie in the face, knocking him back slightly before I crushed his skull.
“Nothing left to lose. Get ready to push.” Charlie said, picking up his dead-again adversary. I grabbed my teenager and, using them as battering rams, Charlie and I slammed them into the press, knocking down several rows of undead and tumbling several more off the sides of the stairs. I nearly slipped down after them, sliding on unidentifiable brown goo that was on the top of the stairs.
Charlie and I spun and ran for the edge of the gazebo, jumping onto the railing and climbing up onto the crossbeams that supported the roof. The timbers groaned a little as unaccustomed weight was put on them, but they held. Beneath us, the dead had surged forward and a crowd was gathering underneath us, grasping at the air and raising their dead eyes to the ceiling.
14
Charlie and I just stood there, both of us immensely grateful for the respite. My arms were nearly numb and I felt like I had been battling for hours. My clothing was soaked in sweat, and my eyes burned. I could barely see out of my goggles from all the flying zombie fluids, so in the breather we had gained for ourselves, I pulled out a small package of wipes from my pack and cleaned off my hands and my goggles. Charlie did the same, wiping off his face and hands. It was a weirdly normal moment, given the fact we were suspended ten feet over the floor of the park gazebo that at the moment was covered in living dead and very dead.
I moved across the beam and went over to the opposite side. I sat down and stretched my legs out onto the beam. I would have dangled them over the side, but there were a couple of tall zombies that might be able to grab my legs, so I left them up. Charlie followed my example and we sat across from each other, just resting for a minute.
Charlie broke the relative silence. “So what do we do now? We can’t access the roof, we can’t get down, and we have no ammo to kill ourselves if we have to.”
I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie,” I said. “Have a little faith. When have I not had a plan?”
Charlie began to tick off on his fingers. “There was that house in Turley that had twelve ghouls in the basement. There was that store in Oakland that had so many ghouls in it we were on the roof for two days. There was that time in the condos that…”
I interrupted him. “You know, if you’re just going to be negative…” My response was broken by a fusillade of shots coming from outside the gazebo. I plugged my ears from the echoes reverberating in the roof area, and saw Charlie do the same.
Below us, Z’s dropped continuously, carpeting the platform in a pile of grayish flesh. The ones out on the lawn were cut down, and the ones on the stairs tumbled back as their brains were obliterated.
After a little while, the shots faded away. I leaned over as far as I could, but couldn’t see anything due to the overhang of the roof. Shrugging my shoulders at Charlie, I swung down to the railing and looked around. Surrounding the gazebo were about twenty of the townspeople, all holding rifles. When I waved to them, they set up a resounding cheer, which was echoed over at the town hall. Tommy came forward and smiled at me and Charlie, who had swung down beside me.
“You unbelievable sons-of-bitches!” Tommy yelled above the din. I grinned in acknowledgment and thumped Charlie on the back.
“All part of the plan,” I said smugly before Charlie had a chance to reply and worked my way out of the carnage. Looking back at the gazebo, I was stunned at the body count Charlie and I were able to rack up. Piles of bodies marked our retreat and dead zombies littered the once manicured lawn.
I stepped up to Tommy and nodded my thanks. “What took you so long?” I asked.
Tommy shook his head. “You two were so busy playing ‘Kill the Zombie’ that you wouldn’t get out of the way. When you finally jumped up into the rafters we were able to open up.”
“How long were we fighting?” I wondered, looking at my watch.
“About an hour and a half,” said Sheriff Harlan, stepping up to us. “You all managed to draw away the worst
