Fire belched from the center of the clog of undead. Bodies flew like toys, writhing and burning through the air, some of them dismembered in the blast. Smoke billowed downward and outward from ground zero, temporarily obscuring my view of the undead and of the refinery.
I held my breath as I coasted into the expanding cloud of smoke and debris. It felt as if I was riding into a hurricane. Something pierced my cheek in the maelstrom. I felt cool fingers touch me from the obscurity of smoke but I still had speed on my side and the undead around me couldn’t manage to stop me. After a few seconds of blindness, I hit an ebb in the smoke. Hundreds of undead lurked all around me clambering, groping, impaired by the same loss of vision inflicted on me by the smoke.
I stood on the pedals, finding new vigor in the temporary discombobulation of senses. The bike trundled over debris. Something punctured the front tire, POP-HISS.
I kept riding.
Just as I regained a sense of positioning in the haze, the undead came at me.
I expected to see hunger in their faces, a sense of animalistic instinct, an unquenchable addiction for what only I had to offer them. But I saw nothing, only listlessness. They came at me in their slow gates, pin-wheeling and staggering.
As my tire lost its final breath of stability, pedaling became a chore. I did my best to circumvent the obstacle course of outstretched hands, opened mouths, and shambling feet. For a moment I thought I might actually make it to the electric fence. But the grinding rim of my front tire caught an edge and my mountain bike endoed, sending me ass over teakettle over the handlebars. My final shot reported as I hit the pavement. The bullet chipped concrete somewhere yards away and ricocheted with a whine off into the smoke, taking my final chance at a clean death with it.
They came at me in clumps. All I could see was teeth and outstretched arms. I punched and kicked, trying to avoid a fog of open mouths.
Breathing the heavy smoke threatened to stop me as thoroughly as any of their infected bites. I rasped for air and felt my strength leave.
Finally, I consented. They would have me. I hoped they would kill me, even if by drawing and quartering me, rather than turn me into one of them. I didn’t want to end up like Mr. Barry, whom I had spotted on the school grounds back at Marshall Jr. High, an insentient mass of rotting flesh consigned to walking the roads in search for an ever-dwindling supply of human flesh.
I drew a final breath and sneered up at them as they closed. “Choke on me, you bastards.”
The ground shook. Years ago, I played in a grunge band called Sleeves of Mercy. I quit the band due to a bass player who insisted on plugging into a pair of two-by-two 12-inch cabs, driven by a head amplifier that probably should have been regulated by the power company. Whenever the bass player—he called himself Pump—hit notes in the low range, he shook my core. I still have tinnitus from Pump’s obnoxious playing. The ground rumble reminded me of Pump with his double cab and shaved head, all amperage, no technique.
Three of the undead above me disappeared, as if whisked away by an invisible cable. The rest of them turned their heads in unison toward the source of the concussion. More reports cracked over the area. Another of the undead fell, its head blown up like a melon.
I flipped onto my hands and knees and crawled toward the eastern gate, staying low. I recognized the concussions for what they were: artillery. Mortar shells? Grenades? I didn’t care. The clackety-clack of automatic weapons followed the mortar fire, coming from the eastern gate, coming toward me.
As I crawled, my guitar case got caught around the thigh of an undead girl who wore the remains of a soiled prom dress. She hissed down at me. I yanked, bringing her to her knees. She reached for me with a claw-like hand.
I drew back and slugged her so hard that pain coiled through my wrist.
She snapped back on impact but I could see that she planned to come at me again. I went to work on her with my boots, throttling her with my waffle-stomper heels, screaming as I kicked.
Someone grabbed me under the arms and pulled me away. I writhed around and threw a few punches at my new assailant, a gray haired man dressed in a flannel shirt that smelled like body odor.
“Hold it, boy. I’m trying to get you out of here,” the man yelled as he dragged me along.
My eyes must have expanded to quarters at hearing actual words come from an actual, functioning set of vocal chords. I struggled to my feet, tripping over debris and fallen undead. It took a half-dozen awkward steps to regain my footing. “I got it,” I said.
The man let me go and wheeled around. He held a micro-uzi. He stepped between the undead and me and fired a series of short bursts into the oncoming hoard.
“Run like hell, kid. We can’t hold ‘em for long.”
I wheeled around and leaned into a sprint. There were more gunmen in the fight. They had formed a kind of path through the crush of undead and were keeping them at bay with gunfire for the time being. The men and women kept their eyes on the fight as I ran toward the now open gate. The gunmen allowed the pathway to close like a zipper as they withdrew behind me.
I lost my footing just as I made the gate. I pin-wheeled for a half-dozen ill-planted steps and crashed to the pavement, skinning my hands in the fall. I winced as I gingerly turned over onto my bottom and inspected my palms. Blood poured from dozens of micro-cuts. I didn’t see myself playing the guitar for at least a week.
Firing continued as the last of the self-appointed soldiers withdrew into the refinery. Two men slid the gate shut on a track. The undead, hungry and newly agitated, pushed against the fence, clambering with outstretched hands, some of them even biting the thick wire.
The man with gray hair and a flannel shirt looked up at a high window on the second floor of the refinery. “Clear,” he shouted and snapped off a quick nod.
He looked at me. I searched his expression for some sign of acceptance.
As if he read my trepidation, he winked and smiled, the crows feet at his temples creasing. He turned to the wire gate and lowered his micro-uzi to his side.
A hum and crackle came from the fence. The undead crunched up against the wire went rigid with electric current. I don’t know what kind of power ran through the fence, but it must have been phenomenal because I smelled the things cooking in the amperage. One of the undead, a man with a white shirt and the remains of a blue necktie, convulsed so violently that his head became a blur. I watched him in fascination. His quaking increased to a breaking point. His head exploded with a dull thock. The human, self-appointed soldiers broke out in laughter.
Zombies cooked on the wire for nearly a minute before backing away. More than I could count lay on the ground just outside the fence, lifeless. Whoever had slammed on the juice in the upper chamber had done them a service by mercy killing them.
The man with the gray hair and flannel shirt walked to my side, his boot heels clocking on the pavement. He pushed the micro-uzi behind him on its strap and crouched down. He reached out, palms up, and nodded toward my hands. I laid my wrists in his palms. He looked over the damage. The bleeding had stopped but bits of gravel and tar peppered the ruined flesh.
“Doesn’t look too bad,” he said. “I’ll get you to the infirmary and we’ll get you some antiseptic. Should heal up real nice.”
“Thank you,” I said.
The man nodded. He stood up, pulling me to my feet as he did so. He looked at the sea of undead outside the refinery. “Won’t be long now,” he said.
“Until what?”
“Until we take it all back. They need to eat, you know, just like we do. And they’re running out of food. All we got to do is wait.”
“How long?”
“A month. I don’t know, maybe a year.”
“A year?” I asked, trying to hide the desperation from my voice.