The dense cluster of trees was more of a challenge in the dark. In some places you couldn’t see more than three feet in front of you.
“It’s straight ahead a way,” Victor assured her, when the rest of the group stopped. “You can’t miss it. Five buildings. Or maybe four?” He added, as if you could miss it.
She continued through the woods, already able to see a faint outline of buildings at the edge of the woods ahead of her. Why aren’t there any zombies out here, she wondered.
Then she nearly ran into a chain length fence, stopping just in time. It was only about five feet tall, and there was no barbed wire around it, easy to jump over or cut a hole in. There didn’t seem to be any guards.
That’s when she saw the zombies tied up against the fence. She had to stop herself from puking, just holding it in. The smell extruding from the rotting corpses was enough to make anyone sick to their stomach.
She suddenly realized why she didn’t see any zombies in the woods. But it was foolish of them to not keep guards, not counting on the human threat.
Kim returned to the others and quietly told them what she found.
“It’d make more sense to cut the fence— “
“No, we’re jumping it. Cutting a hole would attract zombies,” whispered Victor.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re going to take this place over, and I sure as hell ain’t gonna have a bunch of rottin’ ass dead guys strapped up all over the place.”
“We don’t need to take it over. They’re asleep, we can just grab the food and get the hell out without having to waste our ammo or risk our lives.”
“Or we can just leave before we do something we regret,” said Ronnie, a little too loudly for anyone’s liking. Everyone comedically turned to him and went “shhhh!”
“This place is a more defendable position, surely someone with military experience like you knows that.”
“I do know that I—“
The hushed tones and quiet voices of the two idiots were silenced in Ronnie’s mind. There’s no way I’m going to be able to get through to them, he thought. I need to grab Anna and get the hell out of here.
“LOOK OUT, YOU’RE ABOUT TO—“
Victor lunged forward and put his hand over Ronnie’s mouth. They wondered if it was too late.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
It was too late.
Searchlights, previously unnoticed by Kim, beamed in the forest, searching for the source of the warning. A light stopped on the group.
“Over here,” Kim could barely make out in the background.
“Get down!”
Almost immediately gunfire erupted in front of them. Without knowing what else to do, Victor, and his men started shooting. Kim couldn’t see a damn thing, so she figured they were shooting just for the sake of it. But it helped in some way, as she and the others joined in.
“Whoever the hell we’re shooting at can’t see us,” Tom said, “we need to stop and regroup. Try and get our bearings.”
“Like hell,” replied Will, firing his gun into the darkness. “We let up for one second and they’ll try to flank us.”
“These gunshots are going to attract more walkers, and the ones we got tied up aren’t going to be enough to save us.”
“Duly noted.”
Tom shook his head and walked up and down the line of people firing. It was like warfare in the 1700’s, everyone really was standing in a line and firing. He tried to make them stop, arguing they didn’t know what they were shooting at, but it was all in vein.
A combination of his persona, his military experience, and everyone’s unrelenting fear and exhaustion allowed Will to take command of the group.
“I’m going to go out the gate and move around, try to flank ‘em. I want four of you with me, now!” Everyone exchanged a few glances before five followed, then three, and finally four went out the front gate with him.
“Shit, they’re already here!” screamed Will.
A herd of zombies, at least fifty as far as Will could tell, was slowly shuffling towards the camp. The low rumble of their stammering and mumbling echoed, shaking the ground like a miniature earthquake.
“We need to take these guys out and get back to the fence, let’s go, double time!”
The small group ran into the woods approaching from the south, circling back up to the north were Kim and the others were lying flat behind the trees.
As Will got closer, he could see the searchlight move into better position, and make out a large group of ten or eleven on the ground, firing wildly at virtually nothing. They hadn’t seen him yet.
“Kim?” he said aloud.
The woman turned around and looked for his eyes in the dark. It was her, and the others. But who the hell were these other people? They’re probably wondering the same thing, he thought to himself.
“Behind you!” Kim screamed.
Will turned around fast enough to see a horde of zombies shuffling ten feet away from he and his men. Panicking, the others with him opened fired, standing in the open without taking any effort to run, or confirm the original threat was no longer hostile.
“Damn it, fall back. Don’t just stand there. Kim, Ronnie, whoever the hell you are,” he nodded to Victor, “come on. We’ll fall back past the fence and set up a defensible position.” He tapped one of his men on the shoulder who didn’t hear him over the gunfire. “Let’s go,” he yelled.
Kim and the others got up off the ground and followed Will out of the woods and around the front of the complex.
“What the hell’s
