No Easy Hope - 01 (31 page)

Ethan stopped for a moment, and looked down at my feet.

“Dude, where are your shoes?”

“Didn’t have time to put them on. Sorry.” I replied, not quite sure why I was apologizing.

Ethan chuckled and shook his head. “Well, watch your step then, and stay close to me.”

“Get ready to move!” Steve shouted from the front.

He was in a half crouch, leaning forward into his rifle with the front sight slightly below his line of vision. I dropped into a similar stance that Gabriel taught me, and readied myself to go out the door. Steve lifted the bar across the door and pulled it open. The man with the shotgun moved forward and checked as much as he could see without stepping out of the warehouse.

“Clear to thirty yards, check your corners.” He shouted.

I tried to call to mind everything Gabriel ever taught me about close-quarters tactics as Steve moved forward and stepped out the door to the left. Cody followed close behind and branched off to the right. Stan went out and followed Steve. I stayed behind Ethan as we exited, being careful to exercise muzzle discipline (AKA not pointing my gun at the guy in front of me) as I moved.

Ethan turned to the right and I followed him. The sky above was overcast, but the light still stung my eyes after the gloom of the warehouse. I blinked a couple of times to clear my vision and looked around as I ran. Cracked and crumbling pavement covered the ground behind the warehouse for fifty yards, and then turned into a field of overgrown weeds that terminated at a tree line about thirty yards further away. At least three dozen infected stood in the open space between the warehouse and the trees with dozens more stumbling out of the woods behind them.

“Holy shit.” I muttered.

Steve and Cody opened up with their rifles, dropping an infected with each shot. Steve’s powerful battle rifle blew the undead’s heads apart in a black and gray plume of rotten gore every time he pulled the trigger. The roar of the big gun was deafening. Stan and Ethan began firing in front of us, and I realized that I had stopped moving to watch Steve and Cody. I turned and hurried to Ethan’s side and crouched into a firing stance. Stan and Ethan were picking off targets as soon as they got to within twenty yards. I flipped of the safety and chambered a round, then lined up the red dot on my optical sights with an infected forehead and began firing.

The sights on my gun allowed me to shoot with both eyes open, and the suppressor made the H&K much quieter than the unsuppressed rifles the other defenders carried. The staccato chatter of gunfire drowned out my ability to hear anything other than rifles unloading hot lead into the walking corpses around us. I’m not sure how many undead I put down, I missed a few shots in all the commotion, but I know I used up one magazine and more than half of another before Steve called a cease fire.

“That’s enough, get to the roof.” He ordered.

We all turned and sprinted toward the wooden spiral staircase and clambered to the top. My adrenaline pump was going full blast, and I was slightly winded by the time I got onto the roof. A man and two women that I recognized from the meeting earlier in the day were busy picking off the infected. The two women sat near the edge of the building and fired .22 rifles at the undead. The man had a scoped AR15 on a bipod, and fired from the prone position. Every time he pulled the trigger, a revenant hit the ground. The two women took out anything that he did not have time to pick off, letting the creatures get to within twenty meters before firing. At close range, the little rifles that the women used were very accurate and effective, but there were too many undead emerging from the surrounding forest for them to be able to shoot them all. Steve ordered the four of us to spread out and pick an area to defend. I moved to the far side of the wall closest to the tree line, and Ethan took up position twenty feet to my right.

“Take care of anything that comes from that direction,” he said pointing diagonally away from the warehouse’s northeastern corner, “I’ll take out anything from the closest part of the wood line.”

I nodded and sat down into a shooting position. I kicked myself mentally for not fixing a bipod to my rifle’s lower rail, and took a few deep breaths to slow my heartbeat. I ignored the loud bangs and cracks of gunfire around me, and focused on controlling my breathing. I looked around to see what angles of fire the other defenders were controlling, and mentally drew two lines radiating from the corner of the warehouse all the way to the tree line. I spent the next few minutes firing on anything that wandered into my territory. It was strange, but there was something very Zen-like about clearing my mind and focusing only on hitting the next target.

Line up the dot, aim a little high,
crack.

Line up the dot, aim a little high,
crack.

Over and over again, until my rifle was empty. I took out the empty magazine, set it aside, and loaded a fresh one. The cycle began again until the next time I had to reload. By the time I got to my last clip, I could feel heat from the barrel radiating out through the four-sided shroud. I was down to just ten rounds when I dropped the last infected within my field of fire. I looked around, and most of the other defenders had either stopped shooting, or were picking off the last few stragglers.

“Cease fire.” Steve called. There were only five undead left, and I didn’t see any more coming out of the tree line.

“We’ll take out the rest by hand.” He said, and motioned for Ethan to follow him.

Ethan slung his rifle over his shoulders and unlimbered his fire axe. I followed the two men down the staircase, and when we reached the bottom, Steve turned and pointed a finger at me.

“Not you,” he said, “Ethan and I will take care of these assholes.”

“I don’t remember asking for your fucking permission.” I said, as I walked past him.

I drew my pistol as I approached the last few infected. They were spread out pretty far with at least twenty yards between them. I jogged over to the two farthest from the warehouse and took aim with the Kel-Tec. The gun bucked in my hand twice, and the revenants fell down twitching for a moment before going still. Steve had fixed a bayonet to the end of his M1A, and drove it through the eye socket of an infected after knocking it to the ground with a perfectly executed reverse foot sweep. Ethan dispatched his two by casually planting the spike end of his fire axe in the tops of their skulls, and booting them away with a powerful front kick. The three of us spent a few minutes checking around to make sure no more were coming, and then made our way back to the warehouse.

“You shoot pretty good.” Ethan said to me as we neared the entrance.

“I’ve had a lot of practice.” I replied.

The fight seemed to have improved Steve’s spirits, and he even smiled a little as he approached us.

“Pretty nice little bit of fun, eh buddy?” He gave Ethan a light punch on the shoulder.

Ethan nodded and gave him a grim smile. “Yeah, well, the fun part is over. We need to get a clean-up crew together and get rid of all these corpses. Must be nearly four hundred of the damn things.”

“What do you think brought them all out here?” Stan said, approaching us from the other side of the warehouse.

Ethan shrugged. “I don’t know. Got any theories, Eric?”

I frowned as I considered the question for a moment before responding.

“I can’t say for certain, but I think these things might have some kind of herd mentality. It would explain why I keep seeing them moving in hordes.”

Ethan frowned, and Steve’s smile faltered.

“That is not a comforting thought.” Ethan said.

“We should head inside and let everyone know it’s clear.” Cody chimed in.

Ethan agreed, and knocked three times on the steel door.

“Its Ethan, you can give the all clear.”

I heard the sound of the bar being lifted, and the man with the shotgun opened the door.

“Any casualties?” He asked.

“Not unless you count those bastards.” Ethan pointed a thumb behind him at the piles of dead bodies.

The five of us walked through the door back into the compound. It took a moment for my vision to adjust to the gloom, and my ears were still ringing from all the gunfire. Bill and Andrea looked all of us over, and asked us to give them our clothes. Andrea used the wooden partitions from the showers to set up a screen for us while we disrobed. We gave our clothes to Stacy and a few others over the top of the screen so that they could wash and sterilize them. Bill brought us buckets of water and bars of soap, and ordered us to scrub ourselves down.

“Before you go get dressed, I need to check each of you for any traces of infected blood or tissue.” He said at one point, with clinical detachment.

I used up most of the little bar of soap cleaning myself, and sponged water from the bucket to rinse off. Bill looked me over, pausing when he saw my feet.

“Did you go out there barefoot?” He asked, frowning.

“Yes, I did. And before you start, I know that was a stupid thing to do. It won’t happen again.” Bill glared at me for a moment, then nodded and checked my feet.

“I don’t see any cuts or scrapes. You got lucky.” He dismissed me with a wave and motioned for Ethan to step forward. Noah Salinger stood at the edge of the partition and handed me a towel. I dried off quickly and turned to walk back to my truck with the towel around my waist.

“Hey, Eric, these belong to you.” Noah said, holding out my sandals.

“Right, thanks man. I appreciate it.”

Noah nodded as I put on my sandals and walked back to my truck. I put on a pair of Army surplus BDU pants, boots, and a t-shirt. I was lacing up my boots when I noticed Stacy approaching.

“Busy day, huh?” She said as she sat down on the concrete in front of me.

“Yeah, little bit.”

“You okay?”

I laughed a little at the question. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

A half smile turned up one corner of her mouth as she shook her head at me.

“You’re not just acting tough, are you? You really mean it.”

“I’m not really interested in being tough, so I guess I do.”

“I thought all guys wanted to be tough.”

I laughed again. “Not this one. I’d rather be smart than tough any day of the week.”

Stacy’s smile widened, and it was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.

“You planning on sleeping out here tonight?” She asked.

“Yeah, after I get done helping dispose of the bodies outside.”

“I have a better idea.” She said as she stood up and offered me a hand.

“How about you come over to my place, and we spend the night together. Let the others take care of the bodies.”

I felt my blood heat up immediately. Stacy saw me flush, and stepped closer to me. I took her hand and followed her to her little shelter. It consisted of a bed, a chest of drawers, and a bar suspended between two walls that did the job of a closet.

“Welcome to my home. It’s not much, but…well, it’s not much.” She smiled as she held her arms up to encompass the room.

I responded by sliding an arm around her waist and pulling her close. Her arms wound around my neck as she stood on her toes and kissed me. She did an amazingly thorough job, and wrapped her legs around me as I lifted her up. We spent the rest of the evening in her little bed venting all of the stress, worry, tension and fear that we had both kept pent up inside of us for the last three months. When we were spent, we fell asleep with our naked bodies entwined around one another.

 As I drifted off to sleep, I let myself relax for the first time in months, and simply enjoyed the feeling of holding a beautiful woman in my arms.

Chapter 11

Planning Phase

I woke up the next day when Stacy stirred and got out of bed. It was dark in the little shack, but I could make out her beautiful naked form as she put her clothes on.