Day 332 - Untitled Zombie Story Chapter 3.2 - (1,437 words)

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UNTITLED ZOMBIE STORY

By Wayne Webb

Chapter 3.2

The car pulled to a stop and James rolled down the window, his brother had climbed into the back seat and into the trunk of the car a few hundred meters away, long enough so that no one would necessarily know that there was a second person in the car. James pulled the knob below the dash to release the catch on the boot as the car came to a halt, Derek holding the inside catch to make sure it did not spring free with the change in motion.

“Hey y’all?” James drawled in an overdone and overacted accent, trying for friendly and not too bright in a less than subtle way.  He had a gun tucked in the back of his waistband and he strode forward until one of the gunmen from the barricade wavered away from Ben’s team and settled his sights on James. “Hey? What’s going on here? Just trying to be neighbourly and see if …”

“Shut the fuck up!” shouted the leader, the one with the knife on his captive’s throat. He was thrown by the arrival of the car, already unsettled by the apparently magical dispersal of his never-fail plan of herding zombies to his advantage. This plan always worked, the newcomers were always overrun or running for their lives. Occasionally they would get away but most of the time they would either get killed by the undead, rise again and attack their compatriots or he and his gang would kill them.

This was something new, something that upset the balance and made things unpredictable, uncontrollable. Whatever was different was in that mini-van and they had control over the undead. How that was even possible he didn’t know, but he knew he wanted it. Normally by now they would be firing up the mini gun that was just behind the top of the barricade, keep hidden until it was ready to be deployed.

The plan then was to mow down the undead, either killing them a second time or taking legs and arms out from under them, making them easier to deal with. That was not an immediate option though, because the obviously had something in that van. Something they could hit with too much random firing and something that they may not know how to operate if they managed to not damage it.

This interloper sounded like a good old boy, thick and slow-witted and maybe he was the very thing he needed to make an example of things. He put together  a quick plan in his mind, to plead for this guys help and then take him out brutally, bloodily and scare the living shit out of the others, then offer them their lives in exchange for the technology.

He may even honor the deals he would offer in barely good faith, the lives or deaths of these people was neither here nor there unless they turned out to be a threat. Second look at them he wondered how much resistance there would be if their guns were gone. He decided to go ahead, this was his plan and this would work. Take out the hick, dominate the van folks, whoever they were and then get the zombie tamer, whatever it was.

Then see what happens.

“Hey, yeah hey!” the leader shouted. “These guys attacked us, they’re trying to kill us – they drew their guns! Look I only have a knife!” The he twisted around as James was walking slowly in the same direction, towards him and his captive. His men guessed what was going on and swiveled to cover the other members of Ben’s team, creating a stalemate again but leaving the three men in the middle to play out the story that their leader was intent on writing.

“What the hell? Hey, why doesn’t everyone just put down their weapons and…” James walked slowly into range and he hoped that Derek had plenty of time to get out of the car, ready his aim and get a bead on this asshole with a knife. If he didn’t this was about to get very messy.

The asshole lunged suddenly, pushing his captive into the ground and leaping upwards with alarming speed, the knife blade flashing in the sun as he got off of his feet and crossed the last distance between them rapidly.

While he was still in the air two separately fired bullets bit into his chest, one exploding out his back with a puff of red and spraying over the ground a few feet behind. The other one embedded in his heart and ended his life in seconds, blacking out and spinning round slightly with the force of the shots. The grip on the knife loosened and he fell to the ground, clipping James’s feet as he did so.

There was silence in the cleared space outside the barricade and nobody moved for around twenty seconds before a screeching howl came from behind them all and the mini gun made it’s appearance. A woman, red in the face and grimacing and still screaming her rage and terror at her partner’s death spun up the gun and the whirring sound of approaching death began.

James thought about running but he knew there was no escaping the four thousand rounds per minute that the gun was capable of issuing. All his time in the city, playing Xbox into the small hours, Call of Duty taught precious little other than which guns you really wanted to not be on the business end of.

He was looking at her, seeing the infernal anger boiling out of her tears and the screwed face blindness that meant she could probably see very little but would be spraying them all indiscriminately.

In the very short period of time it took to fire up that gun, somewhere between one and two seconds, he hoped that Derek could hit the target that was much further away and at an upwards angle, moving around erratically in rage.

It was because he was looking specifically and waiting for the burning rain of lead, accepting his fate calmly in that split second, that he saw the red dot of the sniper’s scope play across the woman’s neck and then the lower part of her head.

The middle part of her face pinched inwards and her grip died as she felt backwards and no bullets came from the mini gun as he took a round clean to the head and died instantly, a mess of her features as it imploded around the entry wound.

The mini gun spun down and once again there was silence in the clearing.

“Well. Now what?” James said, trying to sound cheerful but the wavering tone in his voice betrayed exactly how close to death he had come and how grateful he was to not meet it all the way.

The red dot danced on his back without him knowing it and Derek saw it from his prone position by the front tire of their car. He knew there was nothing he could do.

“We surrender!” He called and came out with his hands held high, the handgun held loosely by the trigger guard in one finger as he approached his brother. Instead of facing the men in the clearing though he looked back across the fields to where he thought the sniper was hiding.

“Is that Ben?” He asked out loud, recognizing the men from the mini-van as his nameless accomplices. “Tell him we surrender, ok?”

“Uh, we accept your surrender.” Said one of the men from the barricade trap uncertainly.

“It was not meant for you, or them, it was for him.” James pointed over his shoulder, not knowing that the bead was on his back, but wondering if he was in the list of potential targets. “His name’s Ben Johnson and my brother here was surrendering to him. If you are wondering?” James nodded at the body on the ground. “I think my brother only put one of those holes in your ex-leader, and Ben he put the other one in, the round that went all the way through.” He then nodded at the barricade. “Just like the one that went all the way through the face of whoever that once was.”

The man who had tried to accept the surrender he looked askance at his remaining partner and then at the bloodied corpse of his once leader.

The body twitched and started moving, trying to stand up.

“Shit! Someone shoot it!” The same man yelled but threw his own weapon to the ground and held his hands in the air.