Forever Dead

The field was broken by a dirt road running straight through and ending in a stone bridge. The road would continue on the other side (as roads tend to do) if it not were for a barricade made of heaped dirt that was obviously taken from the area in front of it. Along the dirt barricade was a line of gunman, the oldest of which could be no older than 18. Standing to the side of each gunman was another teenager carrying ammo and two extra rifles along with a shotgun with a clip of ammo rigged into it. All in all, they numbered 42 and were the sole surviving members of the original 257 members of the Dunham Highschool Band.1

“Steady,” ironically the word of condolence resulted in a flurry of motion as the small band of students adjusted their various limbs and pieces of equipment to stimulate comfort and blood flow. But that’s just it, isn’t it? Benjamin realized grimly. We aren’t students anymore. We so wished for a reprieve from the stress of laid back learning, and on that fateful day when our wish was granted, we began wishing for freedom from our dream.
“Here they come.” The black sniper shifted knees as he steadily swept the empty horizon through his scope. “I only see one group. They are spread out further this time, so the Molotov cocktails will be ineffective. I count,” he paused for a moment, during which he slipped a bullet into the rifle, “13 previously marked. 3 of them are missing limbs. Nothing that impairs though. Should I take them down?” Benjamin gave a slight nod of affirmation and Will set about sighting, and taking out, the approaching figures.
“Listen up!” Benjamin’s voice carried no farther than the furthest students from him, and yet was loud enough to intelligibly survive the cracks of Will’s rifle. In the distance small figures began to appear, and slowly, ever so slowly, get larger and more defined in their slow gait. “If I was a history nut I’d tell you to wait till you see the whites of their eyes, but frankly, I don’t think many of them still have eyes!” A low, mirthless chuckle reverberated around the band, but it was a laugh of manners and not of true entertainment. “Never the less, this I will tell you. This stone bridge we stand on, that barricade you aim from, and even the plain behind us that we protect… especially the village right down the road. They are all human territory and will remain so for eternity!” The last part was roared, not at the band but at the approaching figures. The shout was answered with yells of agreement, a testimony to the courage of the former high school students. “No zombie shall set foot on this bridge! No bullet shall be wasted today!”
“Ben, wrap it up. The moaners are closing in and I see another wave on the horizon.” Will’s observation was followed by the metallic sounds of gun preparation that had become all too familiar since the change that sent these 42 marching band members into living hell.
Benjamin nodded and continued in a solemn, and almost reverent tone, “May you all be forever dead.”
“Forever dead,” came the unison reply.
“Take it away, Will,” Benjamin muttered as he took his place kneeling alongside the young sniper with an assault rifle in his hands.
“Ready!” the shout echoed off the surrounding terrain as guns were shouldered. “Aim!” sights were laid on heads of approaching zombies. “Mark!” laser sights were clicked on and some targets were adjusted. “Fire!” the unison blast shook the hills and splattered the ground with congealed blood. It had begun.2

15 minutes had gone by since that first order of “fire”. Empty shells and clips littered the ground around the students as they went about the rhythmic and chaotic work of killing zombies. There were more zombies this time, a lot more zombies. And they seemed organized. As one wave of lined up undead came within gun range another would appear on the horizon. They already low ammo amounts were dropping rapidly and the level of fear was rising franticly. The zombies weren’t stopping. They just kept coming. Right as the trepidation reached deserting point, the last zombie was put out of its miserable existence.
Benjamin surveyed the field of bodies, watching for any signs of movement. Any signs of undeath. Satisfied that no zombies remained, he nodded to the support students that were hanging back. Each of them grabbed their gas can and rushed to cover the offending corpses. The other students, the ‘soldiers’ moved forward to create a wall in front of the working ‘support crew’. Any more waves came down the hill, they would meet a wave of bullets.
Benjamin watched the scene from the side. For some reason his anxiety level was raising instead of lowering, as it should have done. He knew something was coming. The last time this had happened… but Benjamin didn’t want to think about that time. Too many raw feelings left for him to return to that place. Then he saw it. One of the support crew members, Kyle by name, had gouged his leg with a hatchet as he was cutting wood for a fire a few days previously. The wound had been stitched closed ad had scabbed over well, but, as Ben looked at his leg now, he saw blood running down in thick globby streams like it was trying to clot but was failing miserably. In the center of it all was a tiny piece of old congealed blood. It was zombie blood. Kyle was infected. Benjamin dropped his assault rifle and unholstered the weapon at his hip. It was a sawed off shotgun with a clip rigged to the action, and the butt had been removed so it could be fired like a pistol. Ben pumped the shotgun once, engaging the clip, and moved towards Kyle. He brought the gun to bear, aiming for Kyle’s head… and Kyle turned around. For a second nothing happened , and then two things occurred at once. Kyle dropped to the corpse littered ground right as the gun went off.
Tiny red flecks flew from the holes in Emily, and then she gasped as the pain hit her nervous system. Her hands moved to the red splotches in her shirt as her searching eyes found the prostrate Kyle lying in front of her. Slowly, as if eternity had engulfed her, she collapsed.
Benjamin moved through the thick sphere of horror that had taken over the band. He walked towards Kyle, who was struggling to his feet.
“What the hell? You just shot Emily!” Kyle roared at the gunman staring him down.
“no, I shot you, but chicken shit like you couldn’t take forever death like a man. You are infected. You must die.” Ben leveled the gun once more.
“Ben!” yelled Will. There was a touch of fear in his voice.
“you know it has to be done, Will, or he will join them.”
“Fuck, Ben, I know that but you gotta see this.” Ben glanced up from his target and his eyes fell on what will was shouting about.
“Shit,” a mob was sprinting down the hill towards the tired humans. The mob was made up of zombies. Zombies don’t run. They shamble. “Retreat!” no one needed to be told twice. Cries of “to the village” could be heard from among the students as they ran towards the barricade separating them from the village they protected.
The run to the village was an identical experience for each student, save a few minor changes from person to person. Adrenaline ran hot through all of their veins as they contemplated the meaning of the chaos. Zombies were running; not fast, mind you, but they were running! Nothing like this had happened before. It showed the disease was mutating. It was adapting to create better predators, and, in exchange, they would have to become better survivors. Benjamin turned back right as he got off the bridge and popped off a shot with his shotgun. The dirt of the barricade shot up in clouds, and then a giant eruption blew the bridge to pieces. Good, Benjamin thought with a grimace, the explosives we used to give the barricade structure worked. He then ran to rejoin the rest of the group. If the zombies attacked, there was always strength in numbers. Kyle had more adrenaline than the rest of the group. His leg had stopped throbbing for once, but he was scared that Benjamin would use the chaos of the battle to shoot him and blame it on the zombies. He was afraid by the prospect of death, even the coveted forever death. But he would deal with that, and Ben, later. Now, he had to survive.3

Chapter 14

“Move,” Will shouted as he ran into camp, “take care of the last preparation we were going to complete tonight, then get to your defensive positions as quickly as you possibly can. This is a Class IV outbreak. Run, now!” Teenagers scrambled all over the small wooden village they had build in the months since the change. It was nice living in the ‘country’ now because there were few zombies. The cities and places of high population had more zombies; so, apart from the occasional assault, zombie attacks were days apart. There seemed to be a much higher population of zombies than there ever was of humans, or perhaps the zombies just knew they had to spread out to get more food. But whether it was instinct or reproduction, there were too many zombies and too few survivors and the zombies attacked in groups. One so called ‘moaner’ started making noise to honor its name and all the undead in the area came shambling for the hunt. Will, the ‘protector’, or defensive strategist, of this group of survivors had set up a series of defenses they would be able to use in the event of a zombie attack in the village. They had not been completed nor had they been tested. No undead minion had made it to the village, yet. This time, it looked as if they would.
A great moan filled the ears of the students, and they all looked on in horror as the wave of running zombies reached the first line of defense. Near the edge of the village there was a ring of barrels with a small space on one end and a bigger space on the other. The idea was that you had to pass through the ring of barrels to get to the village. The small space was barely big enough for one man to pass through, so the zombies would gather in the space between the barrels, and they could be shot like fish in a barrel. Any that got through would do so slowly so they could be killed easily.
To Will’s dismay the defense did not hold these super zombies. They reached the edge, and leapt up and over the circle of barrels. Will frantically aimed his rifle and shot the barrel closest to the village and the whole ring exploded throwing zombie parts and burning zombies everywhere, but still more zombies came. They reached the fence surrounding the main portion of the building, and kept running as bullets whizzed by. A few were hit, some in the chest or arms. Only one or two were actually taken out by a clean shot to the head. Then, they hit the band. The students had been standing in a group next to the edge of the so called ‘village square’, but they now scattered into the city searching for a more defensible spot to survive. They knew the village like they knew their rifle; they could take apart a map of it and reconstruct it in the dark. It was a requirement for survival that all routes of flight be known by the students, and that knowledge was paying off.
Will, Benjamin, Kyle and the ‘weapon’s specialist’ Kayleigh all ended up in one of the four bunk houses of the village. Each bunk house had 5 bunk beds, leaving two people on watch at night. All four students immediately pushed bunks up against the door and surrounding walls to increase the durability of the walls. “I had 4 behind me,” Will huffed, trying to catch his breath.
“I had none,” Kyle reported.
“6,” Benjamin smirked.
“No clue how many were behind me, but I killed 3 of them,” boasted Kayleigh as she checked loaded her shot gun and made her ammo easily available. BLAM the bunk beds against the door shifted a few inches and something outside slammed against the door. “Here they come; Kyle and Will push against the beds and try and block them a little longer while I load these.” Both named students moved to obey Kayleigh as she tossed a duffle bag to Benjamin. “Help me load these.”
In the army green duffle bag there were countless boxes of ammo and 5 shotguns. “So, what? You just carry these around with you everywhere you go?” Benjamin asked quizzically.
“Nah, I keep these by my bunk in case I was ever trapped in here. Each clip holds 5 shots, plus the one in the chamber. I have two duffle bags and 10 shotguns, that’s 60 shots before we have to reload. More than enough to take down a mob of zombies. I also have 2 extra clips per shotgun, so including quick reloads that’s 180 shots. We got enough ammo here to stall off those mutant z’s so long as none of you waste shots.” She finish loading the two extra clips for the last shotgun in her duffle bag, and duct taped them to the butt of the shotgun with a hasty wrapping that could be easily torn off in combat. “Get busy, we don’t have all day. Might as well give me those,” she indicated Ben’s pistol shotguns, “and I can load them too and put some extra clips on.” Benjamin tossed the pistols to her and she quickly got busy loading them as Ben started loading the clips and shotguns.
BLAM. BLAM. BLAM. The ‘z’s’ slamming against the door became a rhythmic assault and the students inside were almost lulled into a false state of safety. They had guns; each of them now had two shotguns in arms reach along with lots of ammo. They had shelter; more than many of the survivors could now boast, many were dueling it out on the street with the zombies. They had defense; the bunk house’s walls were well protected. The most vulnerable spot was the door, which was barricaded now. They felt like they would never be stopped.
BLAM. BLAM. BLAM. Each hit seemed to get bigger. The door seemed to move more and more with each hit. Soon, very soon, the door would fall in, and it would be time to see if their constant training had paid off. It would be time to prove that humans were the superior race. “On three I want you two to back away from the door and grab shot guns. We’ll sacrifice defense for initiative.” Will nodded. Kyle stared blankly at the wall and Benjamin could only hope that he understood. “One.” BLAM. “Two.” BLAM. Benjamin hesitated as he contemplated the rhythm of the hits and the gravity of his next words. BLAM. The door came falling in and Will and Kyle fell to the floor as the bunk beds skidded to the side. Each set of shotgun the two defenders had near them flew across the floor, coming to rest only God knew where. Zombies came rushing in, more zombies than the original estimate. Their forces had grown, and all of them were running through the doorway right then trying to get to the portable snacks.
Kayleigh was unfazed. She unloaded shot after shot into their midst, aiming for the closest z’s head and hoping the scatter pattern of the bullet would take out more. The moaners were barely distracted by the bullets. They felt no pain. They didn’t bleed. The shots that missed ripped holes in their torsos, but they had no organs that needed protection. Severed intestines fell to the floor as a decayed smell permeated the room so strong that Kyle threw up over his already struggling to stand body. Will quickly spun to his feet, grabbing the shotgun Benjamin threw to him and set to work blowing whole zombies away. Kyle struggled to his feet only to slip on his own vomit and hit his head hard against the dirt floor. Kayleigh emptied her three clips first and hurled her shotgun at an approaching zombie’s head. The force was enough to shatter the z’s skull and brain the approaching moaner. He collapsed to add to the growing mound of bodies.
Kyle succeeded in picking himself up and grabbing a shotgun, and he slowly shot at the approaching enemies, not really doing much good. After what seemed like an eternity of fighting, but in reality was only 6.26 minutes, the last zombie dropped dead. Benjamin tossed down his shotgun in disgust. He had finished his third set of three clips a couple of secs back and had to use the shotgun’s butt as a hammer as he brained any zombies that were unfortunate enough to come close. Kayleigh had shot 3 sets, Will shot 2 and Kyle shot 1. Quick rummaging turned up the missing shotgun among the beds, and Kayleigh armed herself with it. Benjamin handed one pistol shotgun to Will, and kept the other one for himself. “What am I supposed to do now? I'm unarmed.”
“Die,” Kayleigh replied shortly.
“Excus…” Kayleigh emptied a round into Kyle’s ‘unarmed’ face. Red mist and brainy gore splattered the prostate corpses, giving them with their last meal. Kyle collapsed into his pool of vomit.
“Bastard” Kayleigh spit into his slowly cooling corpse.