"Clear! Clear!" he shouted.
He had done his job.
Wilson called him off point, assigning the next point to Orren Lassell. "You were commendable, Eliott. Good work." Eliott saluted. "Thank you." Wilson moved to the front of the pole, and Eliott Blakely took the back. "Ready," he said as he lifted the meat off the ground. They continued forward, following the winding trails that reflected millions of years of forest and mountain erosion and growth. Each turn revealed another set of hazards in a world beset by the walking dead who haunted all of Pennsylvania in their staggering gait. Orren watched all sides as well as the back and front of the trail they were navigating. He saw several droolers moving rapidly up ahead. They might have seen him, and they might not. Only stumbling upon them unaware would tell the tale of what lay ahead. You could never be totally sure of anything. Hopefully, they were so dead, their eyes had missed seeing him. Many zombies were almost blind from their dried and darkened eye balls which barely kept them walking straight ahead much less performing complex movements. Something moved up ahead, and it became a dead man walking only five feet away and out of nowhere. Orren crushed his face with the rifle tip, then crushed his skull with his boot. "Clear!" The son of a bitch had been cunning. Either that or it was asleep and Orren's approach had frightened him. Either way, Orren survived. He no longer felt frightened in combat. He was at ease in killing these monsters and no longer flinched from danger. That was unthinkable and would never happen, not ever again. No matter what, Orren would be ready. He didn't even have to think about what to do. His mind subconsciously performed all of the decisions, allowing him to concentrate on the emerging tasks he had to perform, all of which ended in avoiding the deadly bite of the plague-ridden corpses as they meandered forward or attacked him from all angles as he turned and leveled his gun at their heads and shattered their bones with bullets, rifle butts, and boots that permanently crushed their skulls for assurance they would never again be hungry for human flesh.
An hour later, they secured the doe and jumped into the truck. They were heading for home. Each soldier was happy to have secured enough meat for several days. Their unit would be pleased. None of them would starve now. Their stomachs would be filled. Nothing was more delicious than venison well prepared. The doe was less than three years old, and she would be tender and thoroughly tasty. She was void of all zombie bites, so she was safe for them to consume. She had done her job escaping the droolers who had hunted her day and night, and they had done theirs in bringing her down and felling the zombies who had been tracking her for so many weeks.
At the meal, John Wilson, cut the first piece of cooked meat from the hindquarter. The blade cut away the morsel which the "general" held in his hand. "Clear!" he shouted, and everyone smiled. He tossed the first cut into the group to see who would luck out and thereby benefit from a very lucky grab. They would eat well for the next few days. What came after that no one was sure. They only knew they would endure it, whatever would be their near and distant future. By now, they were prepared for whatever zombies, the weather, or the planet itself threw at them. They were convinced they could make it.
#
The round up started in the vicinity of John Wilson's safe house. Too many drooling stragglers were walking into the camp at night. Some biters were also entering the garden where they would sleep and attack people coming to weed and pick vegetable crops. The watch guards were unable to detect all of them due to various light and weather conditions. Today, regular patrols would clear the immediate area to insure it was safe from attacks. The troops moved out in a circular motion two and a half miles from the house. The units performed a constraining movement in which their enclosing circle tightened around the zombies. Meanwhile, the safe house set up guards atop several towers, each with bows, arrows, and rifles. Music blared from loudspeakers at one hundred or more decibels. It was loud enough to be heard miles away, and every opus acted like a zombie lure. The walking dead always perked up and moved in the direction of loud sounds in their sinister hypnotic trance, their arms pointing in the direction of the disturbance. Noise was a major means of finding food for the zombies, their eyesight being dim, but their hearing and sense of smell were magnified as a form of evolutionary adaptation found in most blind species of mammals worldwide.
Aiden, Orren, and Lisa patrolled in the southwestern quadrant. They moved along a spiral pattern which insured that all shamblers inside the quadrant would be either seen and killed or eliminated by not even being there. This insured a one hundred percent round up ratio from their efforts. No zombie would be left behind, unless they were hidden or lying down unseen. Usually, movements close to zombies created enough noise to awaken them. Once awakened they would move toward the noise and make their presence known.
Aiden heard the music coming from the safe house. The lyrics of "American Woman" ricocheted through the air, bouncing off trees and rocks and animating many within the approaching zombie hordes. This method had been designed by his father who was an avid hunter himself. Robert had discovered early on the effect that noises had upon the walking dead, causing them to hone in on the source in hope of targeting victims to bite. A corpse stumbled into Aiden's vision. Its arms reached straight ahead as it stumbled directly toward him from out of the leaf strewn woods. Aiden ran forward, yelled, and raised his rifle high above his head and waited for its man hunting corpse to approach within three feet. At this point, Aiden's trained arms sprang into action as he smashed the zombie's skull with his rifle butt. A few seconds later, his boots followed up by going into action and massively crushing the biter's skull so that what was left of his brain oozed from its head and onto the leafy forest floor.
"Clear!"
Lisa smiled. Her brother had become quite the little man that his father must have hoped would emerge from years of mentor-ship as a father and a law enforcement specialist. As his son observed the sheriff's actions at home and in town, Aiden had emerged from his dad's many leadership examples to become his father's image of a maturing boy who had grown into a man's shoes.
"He's becoming a young man," Sheriff Wilson told her, "but this is just between you and me. Let's not use this to fan his ego. Let him measure himself. Youths don't take well to outside opinions from family members."
"Does that count for daughters as well?" she asked.
"Yes it does."
"I guess I need to compare notes with Aiden to find how you view me then," she said.
"That would be up to you. Such treachery by daughters and sons is not unknown in these parts."
She laughed.
As she made noises on the forest floor with her feet, biters awakened and moved toward her and toward her fellow hunters. Predictably, they came right at her, drawn by the noise her feet had made, just as she had planned for them to do, and she used her rifle butt to dispatch them with the same aplomb as had Aiden and trooper Orren Lasswell. Lisa had become a good fighter, strong of heart, brave, and not afraid to step forward and to do her part against their deadliest enemies. Her rifle butt hits could kill with impunity, same as those of the men, and she worked out every day to increase her strength. She lined up for her turn at the weights in Wilson's workout gym and pressed a good one hundred and seventy-five pounds on a daily basis building the reserve strength to save lives in battle including her own. Lisa and the other women on the team were serious about survival and covering the backs of the guys. There were no slackers whether male or female in the unit that John Wilson had trained. Biters beware. The next zombie she attracted made his moves toward her. He had not been subtle. He was easy to spot. The noise of his walk was so incredibly loud atop the crackling floor of the woody forest that he had no ability to surprise her, nor was he aware enough of his situation to even try. She heard him coming way before she saw him, but he had no way of knowing that. No zombie ever knew these things. As he emerged from the jungle growth of vines and branches, the leafy venue parted around his half-dead body with its hideously bony face and dar
k gaping hole in his stomach where his intestines had been gobbled up months before by the zombie horde that had fed so intensely upon him in his final screams. His arms hovered in front of him like a car driver reaching for a hidden wheel. She grabbed one of the seven sharpened spikes she carried in a quiver suspended from her back and tossed it at him. The spike sailed forty feet to his head and entered his brain. Down he went. Lisa cautiously approached the zombie. She retrieved her spike from his brain then crushed his skull with a strong boot slam. She saw his brain's crushed innards oozing onto the forest floor.
"Clear!"
Three miles southwest, Sheriff Wilson, his wife Beth, and Aiden's girlfriend Marlaina Kreuz walked along another radius of the encircling zombie hunt designed to contain and entrap walkers in the vicinity of Wilson's home. Marlaina was the first to score with three droolers whom she came upon. They heard her footsteps. They were already following the music from Wilson's home. The high decibel songs drifted a full three miles, attracting an interest in the stumblers who were pacing the woods presumably in search of food. All three were children. Their dead eyes and sunken face were pathetic reminders of the universal impact the Amish plague had taken upon Lancaster and its environs. Marlaina was heart broken at the sight of them, but she immediately determined they were stalking her, having turned toward her from the sound of her walk which she had made sure would be loud enough to awaken the attention of the living dead. She called to them to gain even more of their attention. They came toward her with open arms pointing straight at her, so she raised her rifle butt and used extreme pressure to insure that she was instantly crushing their skulls. Each went down easily. She administered the coups de gras with her boot, smashing their heads into the ground until she saw their bloody crowns were opening to the air and what was left of their brains oozed red fluids onto the forest leaves.
"Clear!"
"Clear!"
"Clear!"
Her compatriots noted the three kills and continued their search and destroy campaign against the useless eaters who threatened themselves and their compatriots. Each success meant an increase in safety for their friends. The Wilson safe house and its gardens and roads would soon be cleared of many more of these ex-human hazards to their existence. Ruth Wilson was soon accosted by two biters who stumbled down the hill towards her, staggering this way and that as they fought to keep their precarious balance on the radically slanting hillside. Their arms reached for her throat, but her fast and sure rifle butts terminated them instantly and with great force. She cleared the area with boot stomps to their skulls.
"Clear!"
"Clear!"
Their had heads cracked easily, being fragile to pressure, and the telltale red fluids poured out through broken head plates onto the leafy forest floor. "Sorry guys," Ruth said. "Wish we could have met under better circumstances, but we seem to have waited a bit too long for a date, bitches!" She had no regrets. Deadly threats needed to be killed, and she had done right by doing so.
"Clear!"
"Clear!"
The fuckers were dead to the world. Nothing could be better. She got three more that day, stomping out their lives as they lay on the ground.
"Clear!"
"Clear!"
"Clear!"
She heard her husband, Robert, shouting the clear sign many times. He had killed seven of them so far according to her count. There would be more very soon.
As the music grew louder, the zombie hunters had squeezed their enemies into a tighter and tighter space so that she saw more and more of them. At the safe house, the situation had developed rapidly as the beasts approached the loudspeakers that were blaring pop music into the forest, luring the biters closer to the center where many of them had clustered together to avoid as much danger as possible. Now, they were luring these groups of dead biters into the fray so they could surround and kill them all and give themselves sanctuary from their daily incursions. Herds of the stumbling devils were soon staggering from among the vines and trees into the open areas where the soldiers were hitting them with baseball bats and stomping out their oozing skulls as rapidly as possible. A series of fenced corrals forced the moving zombies into a confining overflow area which served as a safety net. This protected the soldiers from being overrun by the approaching monsters. This was when the greatest danger of receiving a deadly bite was most severe.
General Grayson Andrews was doing his part along with other national guardsmen and highway patrol officers who had shown up for this occasion. In this way, the culling of the zombies proceeded almost effortlessly. The zombies that missed the target and were too mentally out of it to even find the source of the music were pursued from the rear and either clubbed or shot in the head with pistols at close range.
"Clear! Clear!" rang through the woods as more and more of the deadly creatures were terminated. Aiden could hear the sounds of music and the calls of "Clear!" just around the hill from where he was. Orren and Lisa were nearing his position and they were now close enough to yell warnings and instruction as need might arise which was sooner rather than later as the dead began to gang together in their rush to kill the living for food. Between the shouts of the hunters and the loudness of the music, the zombies were staggering this way and that faster and faster. They were agitated and alert, hunting for meals, and drawn in several directions at once by the chaos and smell of living humans standing so close to where they had approached them. Men on the towers shot arrows at the erratic walkers as they emerged from the trees. Their aim was steady and sure. When lulls happened, people ran out, jumped into the corrals, and pulled arrows from shattered skulls which they crushed even farther against the ground with their boots, and yelled, "Clear!" for each one they insured was forever lost. They jumped out of the corrals with the retrieved arrows which they soon placed in a rearming basket and lifted up into the towers for reuse by the archers. As a result, their fuselage of arrows continued to pour down upon the emerging zombies and no one had to climb the tower again and again to get them there. The efficiency was primitive but brilliant.
Sheriff Wilson's crew had to pull back to keep zombies from escaping the surrounding web of hunters who were pushing them into the killing field ahead. Those zombies who turned to attack the soldiers were being eliminated one-by-one. More and more of the stumblers wanted the soldiers as their food. They headed toward them in the woods as well as in the open areas where the loudspeakers called to them and drew them from their wooded sanctuaries into confining corrals where the soldiers summarily surrounded and killed them.
"Clear! Clear! Clear!"
Shouts of successful zombie kills resounded from all sides of the house as the hunters coordinated their press toward the center, trapping the walking dead inside the enclosing vice grip of their persistently narrowing round up. The places for the zombies to hide were becoming severely scarce and more so as every moment that went by. The living humans were more than willing to step forward and use their bats and rifles to brain bash the zombies, sending them down against the forest floor. The woods were becoming a kind of writhing horror at an increasing speed as the hunters dispatched their quarry and shouted out, "Clear! Clear!," over and over in the imploding and thickening horde of zombies. The walking dead were thus being pushed and lured toward their awaiting kill areas that ensnared them behind the cleverly construction fenced corrals in the open areas just beyond the woods where their human executioners awaited them.
Lisa and Robert Wilson and Aiden Wilson's girl friend, Marlaina Kreuz, pushed forward clubbing the disoriented zombies who staggered this way and that, now heading toward the hunters, now turning and staggering toward the loudspeakers, finding themselves variously baited as they were randomly lured here and there. The zombies were distracted, confused, and easily jumped by hunters with their swinging bats. When the zombies lunged toward them the humans were able to push them back with their arms, legs, poles, bats, and rifles. Most of it was done without resorting to the wasting of bullets. The
zombies, if treated correctly, could not approach humans effectively unless their numbers were so overwhelming that the intended victims could no longer find the room to swing their bats at their would be killers or touch them with their rifles and push them back that way. Only in cases of extreme pressure were gunshots ever required to protect persons who were still in the prime of good health.
By now, only the infirm and those trapped in close spaces required guns to protect themselves, and there were none of those here. People would always be mentally and physically quicker than zombies. Even when jumped, a person could normally push away an attacking zombie due to superior agility, strength, and quickness. People who were killed by the walking dead were either trapped in close quarters or were so unsure of themselves that they either did not know how to act in self defense or were too frightened to do so. A few in the beginning of the plague had succumbed mostly through their own ignorance of what to do. Some, however, possessed a self imposed paralysis and sudden fear when under attack. These were eliminated quickly from the human gene pool so that the humans who remained were faster to fight back and more likely to survive in subsequent battles.