winced.
“He was the right one to send, regardless. He is the fastest runner. C'mon men let's get back to the others.” Turning they all headed back to the second line, Ruben pointedly picking up the pack before they trudged back.
Chapter 15
The sharp pain in his side made Max want to give up and just stop fighting. It seemed like the knife above him hung in the air for minutes, no more like hours, while he thought over his options. Flashes of childhood memories played through his mind, riding bikes with his friends, shooting out a street light with an air gun. Throwing a Frisbee for his dog two days before it was hit by a car and died. The world was paused, he had time to rethink his whole life, his childhood, his college years, his marriage. Sarah. Dead now, or undead, stuck in the attic of his home. What would become of her? Would she starve without blood and flesh to feed on? What about the kids? The kids brought him back. Without him the kids had no one. There might be a time to sacrifice himself for their lives, but this little ambush was not that time. Anger welled up in him and Max bucked and twisted under the zombie man named Charlie, one thrust of his hips and the zombie flew up high enough to make his stabbing motion turn into a flesh slicing graze. Max grabbed on the zombie's arm as the cut sliced down at him and then pushed the arm backwards into the zed's chest tumbling it off of him. Instead of letting the zombie get away from him, Max did the opposite, wrapping the man's legs in his own and tangling him up so he could not move or stab with his knives effectively. One of the blades opened a cut on the front of his shins and then the other punctured his jeans and went into the floor, when the zombie raised that hand to stab again the knife slipped out of his hand to land near Max's gun.
Twisting sideways Max tried to flip the zombie over with him, it only partially worked, the zombie rolled sideways a bit, then quickly recovered. Max pulled his legs up out of reach of the zombie's remaining knife and then crawled quickly towards an overstuffed chair in one corner of the living room. Charlie used the break to lunge towards the gun and knife on the floor instead of going after his prey.
Max grabbed one of the table legs from the coffee table and stood up, turning to face his foe. The table leg was still attached to one plank of the coffee table and Max stood up to face the zombie with an awkward makeshift weapon, the zombie, on the other hand, ended up facing Max with a revolver.
“No!” Max shouted raising his club to try and deflect the bullet, he also raised one leg and cringed backwards slightly in a comical effort to make himself a smaller target.
Charlie pulled the trigger on the gun and the hammer fell on an empty chamber, clicking softly in the sultry living room air. Disgusted the zombie threw the gun away from him, it landed in the formal dining room, hitting the table then sliding off of it onto the chair at one end. Snarling, Charlie stalked towards Max. “I will kill you for them. You didn't have to kill them. It was just a baby!”
Max straightened and shook his club, the board fell off, leaving a wicked looking screw sticking of the far end of his weapon. He changed his stance slightly to meet the oncoming zombie and didn't reply to the thing's words.
“What you can't talk? What kind of man kills a baby?”
Max stepped backwards towards the kitchen opening to avoid the zombie's first slash with the knife, and then swung the club, smacking the zombie in the side of the head, where it stuck with the screw piercing the hard bone of Charlie's skull. The screw was not deep enough to kill the thing, but the blow seemed to daze it, which gave Max a chance to run into the kitchen. The woman had shaken her head and shoulders out of the sink and was twitching violently on the floor in front of it, spreading black blood all over the linoleum. Max's first instinct was to run around through the other exit from the kitchen into the dining room and grab his pistol, then he spotted the shotgun where he had left it at the top of the stairs. He veered for the weapon as Charlie bellowed in rage and tore after him from the living room.
“You are fast enough I give you that much…” started Charlie, only to be cut off by the blast from the shotgun as he entered the kitchen. The shot hit him dead center in stomach, just below the rib cage, the best shot Max could get off in a hurry as he juggled the gun. Charlie went down in a heap, his legs not working anymore. The zombie let out a mournful moan as Max raised the gun and stepped closer. Crawling towards the woman twitching on the floor. “Elaine…” he said touching the zombie woman's leg, then Max shot him in the head spraying blackish grey matter flecked with shards of too white bone and brown hair all over the front of the cabinet doors. A second later Elaine received the same treatment. After checking to make sure that the zombie baby was really dead Max moved to the stairway to check on Stewart. She was lying at the bottom of the stairs, moving slowly, not quiet conscious. He went down to her and gently pulled her into the basement away from the stairway, straightening her limbs and looking for damage other than the huge welt on her forehead.
Turning on his radio Max said, “Amelia, Tom?”
“Yeah Max, is everything okay? Are they there yet?” came Tom's voice.
“Here and gone, there is kind of a mess in the kitchen, so come back but keep the kids down by the tire swing okay. I don't sense any more zombies around.”
“You guys okay?” ask Amelia.
“Stewart got hit in the head pretty hard.”
“She alright?”
“She isn't dead. Then she fell down the stairs. Backwards.”
“Oh my God is she okay?” yelled Amelia.
“She isn't dead or bleeding or anything, just not conscious.”
“We'll be right there!” Amelia said.
Max used the few minutes until they arrived to practice sensing how far away they were from him. He noticed that each of them was slightly different and as his friends and family got closer to him they came into sharper focus. Each glowing bright light of energy was unique, he assumed the one in the front on the left hand side was Amelia, she had the van moving fast, which made the person in the car following her Tom. The children seemed to have a more colorful glow about them, except for the one he tagged as Kenny, his swirling pattern was not as bright or colorful as the others.
Funny, Max thought, but I can't see the vehicles at all. He made a mental note to try and identify everyone by their unique glowing form so he could tell who was where when they were out of his normal sight range. His extra perception seemed stronger now too, as if fighting the zombies had made it grow, a thought Max found oddly disturbing.
“Oh…” Stewart moaned as she opened her eyes. Max was startled to see there was bright red blood in whites of her eyes as she stared up at him, “Did we win?”
“'We'?” Max kidded.
“Ugh, we lost. I was afraid of that. So this is what being a zombie feels like. God it feels worse than when I was alive.”
“We won, I mean I won while you took a little nap.”
“What happened?”
“You got hit in the head with a frying pan. Don't you remember?”
Stewart struggled to sit up, Max helped her and held her steady while she raised one hand to softly touch her forehead. “Nope, don't remember much after going upstairs. Damn, not feeling so right.”
Max looked into her eyes, “Your eyes are bleeding.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. What does that mean?”
“Hell if I know. We passed my medical ability when I got bit by the dog.”
“So you remember that. Do you know what the date is?”
Stewart tilted her head sideways and asked, “Do you? C'mon ask me an easy one.”
Max shook his head, “Yeah I can't say what the date is for sure anymore either, I think it is maybe the
