hand. A loud crack shot through the basement and it was not the bat which broke. Charlie swung his other hand in a punch that ended at Max's face. Max tried to roll with the blow, but it was coming too fast and he was moving in the wrong direction, the hit knocked him sideways into the kitchen sink and he bounced his head off of it and rebound onto the ground behind him. Stewart leapt forward and smashed the man with the crowbar, it hit him on his upper arm, the opposite arm that Max had broke. The head of the crowbar swung around behind the zombie's arm and smashed through it's ribs. Stewart made one attempt to pull it out then she was tackled from behind by the zombie woman. Both of them crashed into the man, who was pushed into the back door, where the glass shattered out onto all of them. Max bounced back to his feet, shaking his head to clear the stars out of his eyes, looking down he saw the two woman struggling on top of the man, who was just laying there with both arms twitching. The woman would have been five foot seven standing up and perhaps a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet…if she were carrying a ten pound bag of potatoes. The zombie woman was wearing a snuggy, a device designed to carry infants in front of the wearer and leave the user's hands free.
The snuggy was empty, where was the kid? Max found it without seeing in the living room, probably on a chair if his memory was correct. The kid was not moving so he filed it in the 'worry about it later' category and reached down to grab the mother's foot. Once he had a good hold he pulled her off of Stewart, who rolled clear of Charlie and pulled out her pistol.
The zombie woman twisted from Max's hand and scrambled away on her hands and knees, the kitchen was of good size, but she couldn't go far. Stewart was up and had her handgun out, she took a shot at Charlie as he got to his feet, the zombie man shrugged off the bullet and grabbed a cast iron frying pan off of the counter. When Stewart fired again it hit the bottom of the pan and ricocheted through the window of the back door. Aiming lower Stewart shot the zombie in the groin and upper thighs, Charlie bellowed in rage and flung the frying pan at her, she almost blocked the pan in time, it deflected off of her pistol and into her forehead. Stewart took one step back, staggering as her forehead turned red and then blue. Another step toppled her over backwards down the open door to the basement below.
Max had his own pistol out, but he could not get a bead on the woman, he took a shot anyway, doing nothing was more likely to get one or both of them killed. The bullet hit the woman's ankle as she slowed to try and pull herself upright.
She screamed, “Charlie! He is killing me!”
Charlie had just finished tossing the pan at Stewart, he turned around and grabbed the tea kettle from the counter, then swung that in an overhand arc at Max, who lined up his pistol at the same time. The kettle deflected off of Max's arms as he held his pistol, however it wasn't enough to ruin his shot completely, his bullet hit the zombie woman in the neck, just below her skull, she fell into the sink and lay there twitching while Charlie looked for the next pan or pot to throw at Max.
At the same time both of their eyes fell upon the block of kitchen knives on the counter, Max fired as Charlie reached for the knives, the bullet went wide and flew into the kitchen cabinet where there was a sound of breaking glass.
“Fuck, don't you ever get weaker?” Max yelled as the zombie continued making his legs work despite the damage Stewart had inflicted upon him. Something brushed up against Max's leg, he tried to move sideways away from it, fearing it was a zombie toddler. His heel came down upon a squishy bit of flesh that rolled slightly as he put his weight on it, beneath him the zombie baby let out a squall of indignation and wrapped its arms around Max's leg.
“Fuck!” he was standing on one of the baby's feet, the kid tried to bite him, but the small teeth he had could not get through Max's jeans, while he was looking down a knife struck him handle first in his chest, the impact was so soft that he almost laughed. The next knife spun more true and Max blocked it with his left arm, taking a cut in return. “Goddamn it! Enough of this shit!” he stepped back off of the baby's leg and then shook his other foot trying to dislodge the baby.
Charlie yelled, “Leave my baby alone!” and charged at Max with a knife in each hand. Max had one hand bracing himself against the doorway between the living room and the kitchen and one leg up off the floor shaking the baby around trying to get it off of him, in his right hand he still had his trusty revolver.
“Stop!” he said as he brought the handgun's barrel down and placed it against the baby's head.
Charlie tried to veer to one side, shouting “No!” but the damage to his legs had caused him to lose some of his coordination and continued towards Max in an ungainly shuffle. Max fired into the baby's skull and tired to pull the gun up before the man hit him, he was not successful. Both men toppled into the living room and onto the coffee table, which broke under their weight.
Max felt himself get stabbed by one of the knives in the zombie's hands, in a daze he watched the other hand rise with a knife in it. His gun had been knocked from his hand and was laying three feet away at the base of the couch, Max couldn't see any other weapons close by and there was no one to save him as the zombie's blade descended.
Chapter 14
For the twelfth time in an hour Bill shook his head and tried to wake himself up. This was only a dream, only a bad, bad nightmare. Through the field ahead of him another figure came rushing out of the night. The moonlight was the only thing that made fighting in these conditions possible. Bill was on the edge of a field with his squad, he had, true to Wilke's word, been promoted to sergeant at the brief ceremony two days before when the soldiers graduated. Also true to his word Bill had raised up Ruben to act at his corporal. The old man had protested, just a bit too much in Bill's mind, but he took the job nonetheless. The squad had been called out once before their training was complete, there was an incident in the small city of Perry, IA. The military had roused them for action and they went house to house checking on all of the residents. Midway through clearing about half of their sector Wilkes had been called and told to move his men quickly towards the west edge of town and some trailer homes located there. Bill and the others had to search trailer by trailer and in the first two they found the undead waiting for them. After that bit of excitement the rest of the fifty homes had been empty. The squad returned to base at the end of the day and celebrated their victory with a few beers Ruben had scrounged up. Even John partook of the drink, which Bill didn't mind, old enough to kill meant old enough to drink a low alcohol beverage. The entire squad was dead tired from the adrenaline rushes they had gone through during the afternoon of searching house by house for zombies, by seven o'clock that evening they had passed out like overgrown children coming back from a play date.
That was four days ago, after graduating they had immediately been sent to Sioux City Iowa, this was not supposed to be their final destination, but just a brief stop on their way to the Lincoln Nebraska area. What they arrived to find was something out of a deranged nightmare. There were a half dozen bridges across the Missouri river between Nebraska and Iowa, Bill and 'his' squad were assigned to push across a rail road bridge and take up positions on the other side, shooting all zombies they encountered, no exceptions. The official briefing given by Lieutenant Jenkins was way too vague for Bill's liking, he and another squad were all the assets assigned to what the militia was calling an area of 'light activity'. The Lieutenant was younger that Bill by almost fifteen years and seemed new at his job. Talking this over with Ruben Bill discovered that this was often the case, Lieutenants didn't know what the hell they were doing when they started any more than Bill had the day he 'graduated' from training. Ruben did know that Jenkins was a regular army, not recently drafted or promoted, which implied that the man at least had more training than most of the men he commanded.
“New Lieutenants are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are getting. Most do okay if they have seasoned non commissioned officers to respectfully suggest a course of action to them.” Looking Bill over Ruben said, “So ours is screwed in that respected. But he might do okay. Just think of him as your boss and you are the supervisor over this 'department'. You can run the day to day stuff and let him worry about the bigger picture stuff. If he screws up too badly he will be replaced, probably demoted in this new world order or moved to be a rear echelon mother fucker, in charge of trucks or something. The army of my time didn't waste any resources.”
