| Empty Graves Part Eleven: The Dead Will Be Judged Fort Severn was now a war zone. The town was filling with the undead who all spilled onto the streets from the poorly defended alley ways, all the time, the main road block remained intact. By the time a few of the A-Team had spilled onto the streets and were roaring around the area in their trucks taking pot shots at the walking dead, their plight was clear and present. They were surrounded by imminent danger and those who gripped on for dear life in the beds of each truck, that bombed through the few zombies dumb enough to stay in the path of the oncoming trucks, were thrown about viciously, on several occasions almost falling out of the vehicle itself, their bodies coming an inch from the teeth of their enemy. Ash and John were up on the balcony of the headquarters as the few floozies they'd collected over the last couple of days ran around screaming in nothing but a tight shirt or a thin gown. "We're fucked, Ash. We're fucked!" panicked John as he ran back and forth on the balcony. "Would you calm down! Jesus! You're as bad as them women back there!" shouted Ash as he fired off another shot from his rifle, this time blasting a hole in the head of a zombie attempting to clamber into one of the squealing trucks below. "Get your gun out and start shooting dammit!" ordered Ash as he picked off another zombie, his aim obviously improving after a few hours of less-than-sober fun. John grabbed his gun from the corner of the balcony and brushed his hair back with his hand, wiping the sweat from his flushed face. Standing beside Ash, he began to fire. Slowly, some of the zombies began to fall either by gunshot or being crushed by the might of American automobile engineering. "Try and do this, Japan!" yelped Chip as he rocketed one of the trucks around the streets, trying to run over as many zombies as possible. "Ye-haw!" roared Ed as he fired aimlessly from his rolled down window, the bullets shattering windows or merely denting the zombie's chests and limbs. "What the hell are we gonna do? There's too many of them to deal with!" shouted Al as he careered his truck around behind the one in front. "I don't know, but we're not giving up without a fight!" replied Dario as he fired off another three rounds into the mass spread of walking death that had suddenly graced their peaceful town. The dead were slowly being picked off, but everytime one went down, five more seemed to appear from the back alleys. "There's too many! There's too many!" screamed Al as he narrowly missed a parked car on the side of the road, surrounded by zombies that were rocking it back and forth on its suspension. "This is fucking hopeless!" replied Dario. "Keep going!" Each time a truck smashed into one of the zombies, they always seemed to go on existing, crawling after their target that disappeared off ahead of them, these slow moving targets shouldn't have been so hard to kill, but the angle at which Ash and John had to shoot them from made it almost impossible. They weren't the watchtower killers. "Shit!" shouted Ash as he realised. "The door! The door! Is the door downstairs locked?" "Fuck!" boomed John as he turned around to run back through the resting quarters they had set up for themselves before running down the stairs towards the entrance to the building like a bull in a china shop. When he reached the entrance, two zombies had gained entry, but John quickly smashed their skulls in with the butt of his gun, their brains leaking from their cracked craniums as John locked the door, scrawling on the glass as best he could backwards the simple message "door is locked!" He hoped that would alert the others to find shelter elsewhere when they tried to come back. They couldn't risk leaving that door open. "Did you lock it?" asked Ash as he picked off another zombie. "Yeah, two of them got in, but I locked it up and took 'em down." John took a deep breath as he stepped back from Ash's position so that his back leant against the railing of the ladder that ran up the wall of the building. But as he closed his eyes for a moment, he felt a cold hand grasp him on the shoulder. Turning in shock as a zombie clambered up the ladder behind him, the beast took a sliver of skin from John's shoulder with its long, gray fingernails. "Fucking bastard!" screamed John as he pulled his .44 Magnum from its holster by his waist. Standing like Clint Eastwood in true Dirty Harry style, John blasted a hole the size of Kansas in the attacking zombie's face. The wound left a gaping crater in the deceased zombie's head so that John was able to see the building on the other side through it, but only for a moment as the zombie fell back and soaring towards the ground. "Eat that you sack of shit!" exclaimed John as he stepped towards the ladder again to see the corpse of his attacker smash open on the hard concrete below, huge chunks of flesh, bone and guts splattered in every direction as John realised there were another three zombies climbing the ladder. "How can they do it?" he muttered to himself as he aimed his Magnum once more, blasting skillfully at the slowly approaching zombies, their heads bursting on the bullet's impact. "How do you like how that shit works?" laughed John as he stepped back over to Ash's position to pick off more of the swarms with his rifle. But as he looked down, he saw they were fighting a losing battle. It was like Zulu Dawn all over again. This was their means to an end. The gunshots and the wailing of the attacking undead that spilled out onto the streets alerted Jake to the fact that he and Mary had to leave now. Running to his open window he jumped down to the porch roof to leap onto the dead garden below. Dashing over to Mary's house he bellowed up towards the window, quickly attracting Mary's attention. She came to the window and saw that she had to leave. Nodding as she backed away from the window, she owed it to her now very religious parents, who were still praying at this moment, to say goodbye before she left them for good. "Mom, Dad. The dead are in, they're coming!" she shouted at her praying parents. "Don't worry dear, the Lord shall provide," replied her mother and father. "I'm not staying here mom and dad, I'm going with Jake. We're going to make a run for it," said Mary as her eyes began to fill up. "I won't see you again." Then Mary's parents leapt out of their religious trance, both of them standing to crowd around their daughter who was about to leave them forever. "Mary. Sweet Mary," spoke her father as he stroked her hair for the last time. "Be careful Mary. Always keep running, never stop, never let the evil get you. We love you," finished her mother as Mary reluctantly pulled herself away from her loving family to run back upstairs to clamber out of her window, the ground floor doors and windows being so well defended that not even a tornado could break into the house. "I love you!" shouted Mary before she crawling from her bedroom for the last time, running over to Jake's house to climb into the car to flee. "Wait a second Mary, I've gotta say goodbye," spoke Jake softly. He dashed back into his house via the back door, which was still not fully secured. "Mom, dad," he said, alerting them from their praying position. "What is it son?" asked his mother as his father looked on with loving eyes. "I'm leaving now," he said as his throat began to swell with tears. "I won't be coming back, not for a long, long time. I probably won't see you ever again." Jake's parents, like Mary's broke free from their religious mindset and gathered around their son for the last time, hugging him strongly to try and make up for their lack of being there for him over the past few weeks. "We love you son," said his father as he patted Jake lovingly on the back. "We'll miss you. Please say you'll be back one day," finished his mother. "I love you guys too. I don't know what will happen, when the dead will stop walking or when I'll come back. Just promise me you'll always be there for me," he said as he began to back slowly out of the room, his parents following him to the back door. "Be sure to seal this door!" ordered Jake as he climbed into the car, switching it on with a quick twist of the key in the ignition. "I love you," he said as he began to reverse out the driveway, his parents waving tearfully at him as he left their arms. They, like Mary's parents, were alone now and they were going to make sure they were around to see their son alive in the future. As Jake and Mary left their lives in Stewart Avenue behind, the image of the dead spilling onto the streets filled them with horror. Horror for what they would have to face before they got to Halifax. |