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As the rope tightened around the necks of the zombies who stupidly made their way into the confines of the safe house, the people with their clubs, bats, and rifles rose to the occasion insuring themselves of victory.
General Grayson Andrews used a Rambo knife and a pistol to stab into zombie skulls, to shoot their brains into stillness, and to overcome the approaching corpses as they tried to reach the safe house grounds. When there were too many of them for General Andrews to use the usual methods, he kicked them to the ground first and stomped their heads into the soil. No one could ask more from a man of his age, intellect, and fighting spirit.
"Get back, you beasts!" the general shouted.
He had just stabbed another zombie in the center of his forehead, causing him to crash to the ground. His rifle butt hit the one behind him. "Clear! Clear!" He shouted triumphantly. Others came up behind him, stomping the brains out of those he was laying low upon the ground and calling out, "Clear!" each time they crushed their heads with their boots and bats to insure they would not come back as threats to human life.
John Wilson and his party beat back the zombies. The congested walking dead herd had once again turned toward his group as the other military units from the safe house moved closer. The merging hunters continued to distract the horde of walking dead marauders as the loud speakers pulled them like a magnet toward the safe house and its carefully constructed kill areas.
The assembling biters had become quite nervous. They struck out erratically at the hunters as the circle of dead approached the living along the changing edges of their narrowing encirclement.
Zombies reached out in vain to kill as many people as they could grab with their hands and then tear apart with their teeth. But the humans jumped away. The hunters skillfully avoided their bites.
John Wilson's trained forces were far more savvy as to the ways of the zombies. Wilson effectively instructed them on how to frustrate rabid zombie attacks on living beings. Instead of blindly standing their ground, the hunters made moves that kept the zombies from grabbing them. The humans also pushed back against them with their armories of rifles and bats.
They smashed their brittle skulls using both their bullets and strong bashing blows by their baseball bats against the zombies' fragile and bony heads. The deadly bashing cracked them wide open. Each time one of the zombies fell the soldiers stomped their heads into the ground making absolutely certain their craniums were completely crushed and their brains damaged beyond any point where the Amish zombie virus might be able to rejuvenate them. The Wilson militia hefted their bats and rifle butts again and again. The zombies' agitation had become extreme. All of the activities and sounds going on in their near vicinity were so distracting that most of the walking dead became nearly paralyzed in deciding which direction to stumble. As the circle of death closed around the zombie nation, John, Beth, and Marlaina bashed their way forward into the compressed force of their animated bodies. The confused zombies had nowhere else to go. They ganged up into closer and more compact groups like lambs led to the slaughter.
Soon the staggering corpse hordes poured into the corrals near the house in droves. Their nearly paralyzed arms reached straight out in front of them as they walked forward until stopped by the fences. The archers easily shot arrows into their heads from the three guard towers hovering high above, shooting their well aimed missiles from bows from the absolute safety of their positions. "Hit! Hit!" the archers yelled, followed by similar calls from those on the ground.
The soldiers in the yard below pulled arrows from the skulls of the downed droolers. Others stomped their skulls. Both groups yelled the all too familiar "Clear!" signal to the archers. This indicated they had finalized each kill with their stomping boots and stepped back so the archers could shoot the next line of zombies with their fusillades of retrieved arrows. while at the same time, their feathered projectiles never threatened the men working the battle fields below.
The guard tower's archery carriers came by and retrieved the bloody arrows from the ground where the soldiers tossed them, then carefully secured them inside the awaiting baskets and hauled them up to landings on the towers.
Paul Lester and his wife, Kelly Lester, worked their hunting bows in Wilson's guard tower number three. Both were bow hunters and members of McCaskey High School's varsity archery team when they had been students in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
They had married as soon as they reached John Wilson's safe house, figuring they might as well let the rest of the kids understand that they were hitched and not available for dating. "Hit!" Kelly yelled.
Paul and Kelly were a great team. Their accuracy was envied in towers one and two. "You bastards are too damned good for the rest of us!" Dotty Jackson had complained. "No, we aren't," Paul told them. "You are just starting out. In a month you'll be even better than me!"
Paul and Kelly were not going to fall into the trap of being stupidly competitive with others, except in sports, but being as good as they were, they had always been humble winners of archery awards.
"How come you are so friendly with us? We are your competitors," Dotty said.
"No," Paul Lester told her. "We are fighting for the continued existence of mankind. If you win, we win.
"Hit! Hit!"
The arrows soon became slightly heavier with several coatings of blood, so the carriers were requested to clean them first. Soon, the arrows returned to the precise weight, so most of their shots were perfect kills.
"Hit! Hit!"
The twang of the bows was heard all the way into the forest and was certainly heard on the ground. The yells of "Hit!" and "Clear!" resounded across all parts of the battle field, and the largest kill numbers were appearing inside the fenced zombie corrals near the safe house where the arrows always found their closely clustered targets. The men and women in the woods were on their own, because arrows from above were useless inside the cover of branches where they would have been deflected along their way.
At the periphery, the fighters were approaching the safe house and were about to emerge from the woods. Still, there was an occasional breakout of zombies past them, which they carefully took care of while their compatriots filled the gap in the line as they chased after and killed the animated dead with their weapons no matter where they attempted a breakout. All of the hunters were completely covered with blood from their hair to their shoes, all of it zombie blood, as they smashed open their heads and destroyed their ability to rise back up and attack them.
"These droolers are reaching their limit," Sheriff Wilson told Aiden's girl friend, Marlaina Kreuz.
"Yep," Marlaina said, "They've reached the end of their trail. We got them. That's for sure." Marlaina hugged Aiden's mom, Beth Wilson.
"You do all right as a soldier," Marlaina told Beth Wilson. "Who says a house wife is nothing but a man's toy. You do all right, Beth."
The sheriff smiled. His wife was certainly not his toy. She had always done her part. She could be trusted. She worked, mothered, and wifed full time to make their marriage work.
"Ruth's a good wife and mother," the sheriff said. "I think I'll keep her."
Just then, a drooler broke through the woods and came within ten feet of the three of them. Ruth aimed her rifle and caved his skull in as he grabbed at the three of them.
"Goofy bastards," she said.
All of them laughed. Goofy all right. Deadly goofy. The sooner they were dead the better for all of them.
Closer to the house, General Andrews shot one zombie after the other. He rallied many of the fighters from the roof top where he stood and fought, and the National Guardsmen appreciated the way he stood with them and barked them orders.
"Don't let too many of those bastards push against the fences in the corrals! The fences will break and you'll soon be overwhelmed by them. Get them as soon as they are corralled, boys! Or die trying."
He should have added, that they'd die if they didn't, and Gra
yson knew that sounded more like the truth. However, his men knew that as well. It wouldn't help to emphasize the already obvious. They had enough to do. "I love killing these chimps," Grayson thought. He chuckled. "Get them! Kill them all! Let God sort 'em out, boys!" He loved that phrase as did many of his trained fighters over the years in whom he had ingrained it.
Grayson had been a military puke since he was born, and his dad was a Vietnam Vet from way back and long before these metro-sexual men started emerging like effeminate male swans from their high schools. What did they teach them there these days, anyway? How to be a girl? Grayson just couldn't figure it out. Things were not the way they were way back in the old days. "Everywhere you go," Grayson mumbled, "Mostly you find guys without balls." It gave Grayson the mental shits just thinking about the recruits he had to train. He had to start with teaching them to be men and training the women to let them be men as well without snipping their male stones away with some crazy politically correct feminist anti-guy statements that corporate women tossed into their faces day and night.
Both men and women needed exactly the right set or they'd fail in combat. This was Grayson's biggest challenge: Helping both sexes to grow a set and still respect each other. "Aw," Grayson thought, as he squeezed his trigger and dropped one zombie after the other, "The world has certainly gone to hell, and this plague is our gift for letting it get this far in the first place. I know that God's punishing us for snipping his nuts off in those new goofy little churches."
Aiden's group had nearly cleared the lawn's edge. They were pushing the biters past the trees and into the confining corrals, listening to the sweet sounds of their own hammer blows to their heads. The zombies were beset from all sides now. They were trapped inside the closing noose, falling dead from oncoming bullets, arrows, and baseball bats.
"We got them!" he cried.
There was a warm feeling of relief, because none of them were ever totally certain how any campaign would turn out, and they didn't have the firepower or manpower to make any mistakes.
Soon, people were going to be scarcer than hen's teeth, if things continued the way they had since day one when the plague jumped them unaware and took so many of them away before they knew what was happening.
Orren smiled.
"How old are you, Aiden?" he asked.
"Not old enough," Aiden said. "My childhood is totally on hold, Orren. Same as yours."
"You sure make a fine soldier," Orren said. "Your dad is so proud of you. I want you to know that. I wish I had a dad like yours."
Aiden put his hand on Orren's shoulder. "We are all each others dads and sons now," Aiden said. "This little family we are in here belongs to all of us, Orren. You, me, Eliott. If we don't make it together, mankind doesn't survive. So, we need to hunker down and stick together. You know what the old timers told you. 'Blood is thicker than water.' It's true. But now there's so few of us left, we are all family. You and I are the same blood.
“My dad is now your dad, too, Orren. And I'm proud of that. I see you as my older brother I never had until the shit began to fly and people starting dropping all over the place. However, just remember. If we ever get in a personal fist fight, I'll pop your ass, brother to brother. That's how families of brothers are." Orren hugged him. Aiden was an all right kid. He was young, strong, and had a great personality. "If I had a son, I'd want him to be you, Aiden. I want you to know that."
"You'll have sons," Aiden said. "You'd better have them."
"Why?"
"Because we are fighting to survive. If we don't have kids, we are going to be like the dinosaurs. If each of us has kids, we have a chance. If not, we are toast. Gone the ways of the mastodons. They were all over Pennsylvania fifteen thousand years ago. I've seen their bones in museums. We were the mastodon's zombies. We showed up and wiped them out. You'll have kids, Orren. You have to. I have to also."
Orren had never had time nor inclination to think that far ahead. He respected Aiden a great deal for his ability to think things out like this.
"I appreciate you," Orren told him. "I'll be your friend if you'll let me."
"We are friends. We've killed zombies together. We've watched our backs out here and elsewhere."
Orren smiled. He needed friends. Orren was all alone. That's how he got into the Pennsylvania National Guard. He had no one to love him, no one to care. He was hopeless out there. Alone. Abandoned. Scared.
"I ain't got a real family."
"Now you do. I'm your family. Mankind's very future is your family."
The hordes of zombies pushed at the men from all directions. They reached out for their throats, but found themselves being batted, rifle butted, arrowed, and shot to death at near point blank range. The arrows poured down upon the hundreds of surging biters who were rushing in their usual slow motion toward the soldiers in Wilson's army. Everywhere they turned, people were onto them like dogs onto shit. The constant bats and true sailing arrows kept killing them. Piles of their bodies built up and the new zombies had to climb up over them to get at the soldiers. But that wasn't working out too well. Walking was hard enough for a zombie, but climbing masses of dead zombies was even harder. The zombies had to use both hands and feet now to get over their own bodies, so they had nothing left to protect themselves. The rifle butts made short work of their fragile skulls. They generally cracked as easily as oyster shells opening atop a steam tray.
When it was all but over, the people embraced and waited to hear if more zombies were coming. They weren't coming. The battle was won. Then, at Sheriff Wilson's orders, they inspected each corpse and crushed its head, if necessary, to insure it was finished forever.
The soldiers slept well that night as guards stood watch. Several walkers stumbled into the site and were instantly jumped and killed. Now and then a zombie began to stir, but only a few. Practically all of them were totally dead.
The ritual of stomping their heads to make certain was working well for the surviving humans. They would always use it to insure they were not going to be attacked from awakening zombies. Those older days of not crushing their skulls were in the past and would not be repeated. Smashed walker heads had become persistent battle trophies of great beauty to the human race.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Pilgrims
The Fredrick Schneidholst Family were vintage Amish. They had lived in Lancaster County for more than one hundred years. Fredrick’s father had taught him all of the Amish ways, but a horde of zombies put him down as he milked his cows in the barn on his last morning. Later, Fredrick was accosted by his father's zombie corpse, and as his father's zombie corpse reached for his throat, his son, Fredrick, put him out of his misery by impaling him with his own pitch fork. Fredrick stabbed him in the head, then stomped his skull until it burst open on the ground.
Now, he was running away in order to survive. He drove his mother, Bertha, and his wife, Donna, and his sons, Sigurd and Johannes, and his daughter, Hilda, to a safer place. The family farm had been robbed by Lancaster townsmen just trying to find enough food to survive. The cattle had been killed and partially eaten by the zombies, and its chickens were taken and consumed as well. There was nothing left for the family to do but to leave for safer quarters before they were completely surrounded.
Fredrick stole a car from a parking lot in Lancaster, one of thousands abandoned there by people who had abandoned them for greener pastures. Zombies paced between the cars, so Fredrick Schneidholst had to take a pistol and a bat with him. He found a car with a key under the floor mat. It started. He picked up his family and headed down the road leading them outside of Lancaster.
"Daddy, remember, we are Amish, and we aren't allowed to drive cars," Sigurd reminded him.
"I know, son, but they'd kill us in our little Amish taxi, and you know God doesn't want that to happen to us. So, we are driving from now on just for our safety or until this emergency has ended."
"Whatever," Bertha said.
She was his mother.
Anything Fredrick thought was right, she'd accept and even support, because in her mind, blood was thicker than water. Besides, now that her husband was dead and Fredrick had killed him, Bertha was bound and determined to support her son no matter what.
"It's against God's will to drive a mechanical automobile," Sigurd lamented. "You're going to hell for this, dad. You know that, don't you?"
"No, I don't know that, son. Now, you may be going to hell, but not me. At least not today, because the droolers can't get into this car and kill us today, son," his father told him.
"Better dead than damned," Sigurd told him.
"Better a pink butt than a red one," Fredrick said, "and you are begging to be spanked, little boy. Just one more word, and you will be."
Sigurd figured he was too old for a spanking. He was eighteen now and had dreamed of leaving home and wilding with his friends. He wanted so badly to try out the English world, probably in New York or Pittsburgh. He had planned to get into a lot of trouble, because later he'd have to go home and be a good German Amish man again, and his wild oats were to be tolerated only for his short time of wilding and never again.
"Can I go wilding?" he asked.
"No."
"I have a right to wilding."
"No, you do not. The past is over for good. The zombies would kill you."
"I don't care."
"Your mother does. Besides, everyone in New York City has been killed. There's nothing left there but zombies. You'd have no one there you could be friends with, anyway."
Up ahead, there was an overturned car. A beautiful girl was standing beside it waving for help.
Fredrick stopped the car.
"We need help," she said. "My father is hurt."
Fredrick got out and walked to her wrecked car. Her father looked dead. His head contained a single bullet hole. Blood seeped from the wound. Suddenly, the girl reached for him and pulled him back. Her face was suddenly menacing, and she snapped at his neck. Behind her, a family of zombies staggered forward, pushing Fredrick against the car. Quickly, he reached for his pistol and shot her in the head. Blood splatted onto his face and shirt and all over her relatives who were trying to reach him. He kicked all seven of them away, then raced to his car. He pulled his bat and began attacking them. The first two were easy. Their heads shattered like peanut brittle, spraying blood in all directions. Three more were pushing into him, and he went for the pistol, firing into the head of the leader. His brain went out when his skull exploded in all directions. Suddenly, Fredrick's face was covered even more grossly with a second coat of zombie blood. He wiped himself off and stepped back. Then he smashed the brains of the two closest zombies with his club. The next three went down easily. Then several others appeared. Fredrick beat their skulls in, then carefully stomped each of the zombie heads into the ground as well. Then he hauled them off the road and into the ditch.