The Fall of Society (The Fall of Society Series, Book 1) (19 page)

           
The
man fired at her, multiple times, until he hit her in the head and she dropped.

           
His
shots rang loud throughout the city night…

           
“That
sonuvabitch is gonna give us away!” Hayward whispered angrily.

           
The
man walked to her, dropped to his knees and cradled her as he cried.

           
Then
they heard more of the dead coming from the night beyond…

           
The
SUV driver staggered back to the car and pulled out a machine gun, and then he
noticed that his car was leaking gas. He hobbled away and then saw the
two-dozen or so dead runners that were coming his way.

           
John
clicked his radio. “All guards on the wall, this is Guard One, hold your fire.
Over.”

           
They
watched as the dead honed in on the man’s location, they were just a couple
hundred feet from him as he readied his rifle and opened fire. The rifle had no
silencer and automatic gunfire tore through the night.

           
John
couldn’t allow this so he quickly took aim and fired one silent shot that hit
the driver in the back, he arced forward and fell dead, but his finger was
caught in a death grip and the rifle continued to fire until it was empty. The
group of corpses piled on the dead man, clawing and biting into his flesh. Over
twenty of them fought each other for a morsel.

           
John
looked but didn’t see any more coming.

           
“Turkey
shoot, you ready?” John said to Hayward.

           
“Yeah,
let’s do it, fast.”

           
John
spoke into his radio. “This is Mandall, guard posts six, seven, and eight get
ready for a quick shoot on my mark. Over.”

           
“This
is eight, we’re ready. Over.”

           
“Six
here, we’re good to go. Over.”

           
“Seven
is ready. Over.”

           
John
and Hayward took careful aim. “You ready?” John said.

           
Hayward
closed his left eye and looked through his scope with the right. “Affirmative.”

           
“Now,”
John said into the radio.

           
Eight
silenced rifles fired down, in unison, at the group of the undead and multiple
heads were hit, bullets went through splattered brains and impacted into the
ground. They all dropped, one-by-one, until they killed them all. The shooter
that got the last one hit it in the head perfectly, but the bullet went through
and struck the brake light of the SUV, causing a
spark
that popped and ignited the gas. The flames reached the gas
tank and it exploded into a loud fireball that reached high into the night sky.

           
“Oh
fuck,” Hayward said.

           
Then
from out in the city of the dead, they heard it—

           
Roars
and screeches from many of them
…

           
The
sound stretched through the night and when it reached them, it shivered
everyone’s souls in the camp.

           
A
familiar voice came through the radio. “John, what’s going on? Over.”

           
“Commander,
a car crashed in front of the wall and it’s attracting the dead, I don’t know
how many are coming, standby. Over.”

           
John
and Hayward scanned the area with their rifles looking for any trace of
movement. They didn’t see any, and then they heard them. It was a large horde
moving fast in their direction.

           
“There
they are,” John said.

           
“I
see them, Jesus Christ, I see them!” Hayward muttered in fear.

           
Running
through the busted gate and jumping over the parking lot fence, were dozens of
them, and that quickly became hundreds.

           
“This
is Mandall, everyone hold your fire. To all stations, quick quiet in the camp, I
repeat, quick quiet in the camp. Over.”

           
The
entire camp went quiet, campfires were extinguished in a hurry, and everyone
froze in anticipation. Six hundred pairs of eyes were all locked toward the
wall, the only thing that protected them from
them
.

           
They
rushed in like biblical locusts and surrounded the burning SUV in search of
something to eat, anything at all. They smelled something under the pile of
dead corpses and dug through until they found the driver’s body. They tore it
apart in splats of blood. The rest of them ran around wildly, in a crazed
manner, bloodthirsty and hungry for warm flesh. Many of them ran against the
wall, crashed into it, and kept moving along it—

           
Searching
…

           
Searching
…

           
John,
Hayward, and the rest of the hidden soldiers watched the spectacle, and a lot
of them were scared, no,
all
of them
were, as they watched a whirlpool of thousands of the dead take form in front
of them. One corpse in particular, a wiry woman with a sterling silver serving
fork stuck in her scalp, ran up to the wall and looked up. It saw nothing at
the top of the three-high shipping containers but night sky. The creature
breathed in deeply and smelled something that caught its interest. It kept
looking up there for any sign of food. The soldiers in the guard shack directly
above it sat there quietly and out of sight, but what they didn’t know—was
that one of their spent rifle shells had fallen out of the shack and was
sitting at the edge of the container—the vibration from the pounding feet
of thousands of the dead moved it closer and closer to the drop-off.

           
It
shimmied to the inevitable and then it fell off…

           
The
casing somersaulted down and hit the fork corpse right in the forehead.

           
The
thing immediately dropped to its knees and stuck its face in the asphalt to
smell what had hit it. It breathed in the metal of the case and smelled the
fingers
that had touched it.

           
And
it
knew
.

           
It
stood up, looked up at the wall and released a bellowing howl that caught the
attention of all the ones around it. They all looked and saw it trying to claw
its way up the wall and then dozens joined it…

           
Until
ALL
of them ran at the wall and began
pounding for a way in, it was a blind rush of thousands.

           
“Oh
no, no, no!” Hayward said.

           
“Keep
calm.” John said and then spoke into his radio. “This is Mandall, wall soldiers
keep out of sight. Over.”

           
“John,
gimme a sit rep. Over.” the commander asked on the radio.

           
“Sir,
they’re at the wall and they know that something is in here, but they haven’t
seen us yet. Over,” John answered.

           
“How
many? Over.”

           
“A
couple thousand, sir.” John said. “I recommend an immediate prep for camp evac.
Over.”

           
“We
can’t abandon the food warehouses, that’s all we have. Over,” the commander
replied.

           
“Sir,
with all due respect, all we have is our lives; we need to start the evacuation
process. Over.”

           
“Negative,
hold the wall, I’m sending reinforcements—”

           
“—No!”
John tried to cut-in, but the commander didn’t release the radio signal.

           
“—This
is Commander Reed, fire teams report to the wall immediately! Over.”

           
A
couple dozen soldiers readied their weapons and headed for the wall…

           
After
he released the radio, John tried to stop them—“This is Mandall, fire
teams stay off the wall, they haven’t seen us yet, stay off the wall! Over.”

           
Some
of them stopped but most of the soldiers ran up all the stairs and climbed the
ladders to get up there, and as soon as the first ones were in plain sight of
the horde—

           
The
dead went
INSANE!

           
“He
just killed us! That old sonuvabitch just killed us!” John said in anger.

           
They
surged with purpose and came at the wall in a unity of rage.

           
The
soldiers fired down at the undead and the soldiers in the guard shacks emerged
and joined them. Dozens of the undead were killed as heads exploded in a giant
turkey shoot, but it wasn’t even making a dent in the turmoil of thousands of
growling heads and cold arms that were clawing at the wall for entry.

           
Hayward
began firing at them as well, but John just stood there and watched what he
knew to be an exercise in futility. The wall began to
shake
back and forth from the force of so many dead.

           
John
grabbed Hayward by the shoulder. “Hayward, stop.”

           
He
kept firing in a panic.

           
“Hayward,
stop firing!”

           
He
finally did, but he was angry. “What, goddamnit! Why?”

           
“We
can’t win this,” John said calmly.

           
“What
do you mean, we can’t win this? We have to try!”

           
“Look!”
John pointed out at the parking lot fence.

           
Hayward
looked and couldn’t believe what he saw, so he used his riflescope—
THOUSANDS
more of them were flooding in
from the streets, it was the entire dead city of Oxnard coming in to get them.
“Oh my God, oh my sweet lord!” he gasped.

           
“We
don’t have enough ammo to defeat all of them, Hayward, we have to go.”

           
“We
can’t just leave!” he replied.

           
Suddenly,
they lost their balance as the trailer they were standing on was jolted—

           
It moved.

           
The
massive force of all the undead began to push the eighteen-wheeler trailer
inward…

           
“Oh
fuck!” Hayward cursed.

           
“Listen
to me, there’s too many of them, they’re gonna get in! I want you to get to the
Black Hawk and start’er up.”

           
“Yeah,”
Hayward said shocked, as he looked at all the putrid mouths below.

           
“Hayward,
come on, man, snap out of it, get going!”

           
“Okay,
okay, what about you?”

           
“I’m
right behind you, just get the bird in the air.”

           
“Okay,
just don’t take too long!”

           
“I
won’t, now go!” John told him.

           
Hayward
ran down the trailer to the front of the truck.

           
John
used his radio. “Listen up, they’re pushing in the gate, I need a driver in the
truck to back it up. Over.”

           
Hayward
got the front of the truck, jumped on its hood, slid off, and ran toward the
rear of the peninsula to his helicopter that was a quarter of a mile away. A
random soldier heard John’s call and ran to the truck, he got in and started
the ignition, the diesel engine rumbled to life. He put the huge truck in
reverse and gave it gas, which started to move it back, but then the energy
from the dead that pushed on the back of the trailer stopped it. The tires began
to turn in place and burn rubber. When John saw that the truck couldn’t back
up, he reached into the tent and pulled out a remote detonator.

           
“This
is John Mandall to the entire camp: Evacuate, I repeat, evacuate the camp.
Over.”

           
The
commander responded. “Mandall, you don’t have that authority, follow orders and
hold the wall! Over.”

           
“Listen,
you ignorant bastard, the gate is failing, do you hear me? They’re gonna get
in! All civilians evacuate, now! Over and out.”