Darkest Night Chapter 2

No moon, not even any stars. A storm moved in just before we came into the town. There’s a little lightning but all it does is light up the faces of my squad, shadows making us almost look like the infected.

Through the rain and thunder, we heard the horde approaching.

The moans come first, echoing from the hills and buildings.

Then the scrape of skin and broken bone on asphalt and dirt.

They were coming from the highway.

I called on my radio to Patty, “Hit the lights, highway.”

The spotlight flickered on, illuminating the highway approach. God there were a lot of them. They were a writhing mass of flesh and gore, rolling over on itself down the highway. Some had missing body parts, arms, legs, pieces of their face, all of them covered in blood and gore. Most of them were clothed, sweatshirts, jeans, suits, even a bride and groom. The groom was missing his jaw and her mouth was bloody. I saw one later that night who was wearing USORSAC fatigues. I collected his dogtags after shooting him down.

Rogers was always disturbed by the sight of them, insists there all still people in there. When we first deployed I had a hell of a time getting him to fight until I locked him in a room with one of them. He eventually used his weapon after trying to reason and grapple with it at the same time.

But now, his tendency has returned. There was a little girl who had been infected and barely scratched at the front of the group. I had to tackle him to keep him from running to her.

And then the first of the explosives went off. The girl and those next to her were engulfed in flame. I saw a few bodies go flying towards us, landing only a few yards away. The burning zombies didn’t even notice the flames, they just got up and started walking towards us again. I slammed Rogers into the ground again as I shot at them from a prone position, one in the head, another, and another. The explosives continued to go off, blowing apart zombies and setting them on fire. Though apart from initial damage from the explosion, the fire doesn’t hurt them much. We mostly use it so we can see them better. Plus it looks awesome.

By the time the final set of explosives had been set off, we could see how many there really were. Only 400 or so, immense but manageable.

Cookie began systematically firing at them, repeating his annoying mantra: “One down, a million to go.”

I lifted Rogers onto his feet, placed his gun back in his hands, pointed him at the zombies and yelled “Shoot the bastards!” I started firing as well.

They were coming too fast though, for every one I shot, there were three more who filled in the gap. We started falling back to the door, retreating a few feet and then covering each other’s backs.

I got to the door first and pulled it open, planting my foot to prop it open as the others fell inside and then jumped after them pulling it closed behind me. Cookie and Rogers moved to different windows to shoot through the slits between the doors while I barred the front door with a couple lengths of steel rebar and blocked it with a couple desks packed from the door to the next wall.

It was about this time that Sergeant Betty and College Boy came thundering down the stairs “Trouble!” she screamed. College Boy ran into a corner and started shaking and pounding the wall with his fist. Betty had taken up position at the door to the stairwell and I ran up to her on the other side of the doorway.

“What happened?” I yelled. I could hardly hear myself over the moaning outside, the shooting and the sobbing in the corner.

“There were some jumpers. They must’ve been hiding in the town hiding and then were attracted by the explosions, three broke into the top story and took us by surprise. McCormick over there managed to get himself bit.” My blood ran cold.

There are only two things in the world that scare the hell out of me. My Father, god rest his soul, and my teammates becoming infected. The weight of my dead friends’ dog tags felt heavy around my neck. So many have died by my hand or their own. More than I would like to remember. No matter how many times you do it, no matter how much you tell yourself that you have to just fucking do it because its better than being one of them, it still scares the shit out of me.

Killing is okay to me when it’s a mission, when they are the enemy, when I can give the responsibility to the higher ups who gave the orders. I’m just a soldier after all.

But when it’s my men who are becoming the enemy, when it’s my decision as to what to do with them, I always make the same decision.

I was brought back by a crash and hoarse scream from upstairs. “How many did you say again Sergeant?”

“Two at the start of it. I killed the one that bit McCormick and then locked the other out of the main hallway. Sir Mick is ok. He... lost his hand though…” She loosened up and looked a bit worried for a second. It was then that I noticed Betty’s lopper was dripping blood. It’s a quick fix to cut off the infected site but it needs to be done within seconds. Even then some might get into the system and slowly spread, but that will give College Boy at least a few more hours to be among the living.

Problem dealt with for now I told myself. Evaluate the situation after we deal with the current threat.

There was some quick pounding of feet upstairs. The weight of my SIR felt unwieldy, I leaned it up against the wall next to me and drew the Remington 870 strapped to my back and pumped a round in the chamber. The pounding stopped. We could hear faint scratching above the gunshots in the other rooms, it was being careful now. There were a few breathless moments until the jumper’s head came snaking around the corner.

Jumpers are a different breed of zombie. Whether the [name] virus reacts differently with certain people’s genes or if it’s a simple mutation no one can tell. The damn things are too dangerous to keep alive and most of the time they kill their victims rather than just infect them. As a result case studies of jumpers have been unsuccessful. All I need to know though is that they’re faster and more agile than the normal human and posses the tenacity and strength of a generic zombie. They also seem to have some basic intelligence akin to a predator’s.

I’ve fought five of these things myself during my tour of the infected zones and I’ve lost eleven of my men to them. Fighting one is always a pain in the ass since they move too damn fast to aim properly.

Sergeant Betty took the first shot at it with her SIR. A moment too late.

The jumper leaped across the stairwell to the opposite wall and then launched itself at the doorway.

I took a step out of cover to get a clear shot and squeezed the trigger, tearing the skin off the jumper’s outstretched hands and blowing off its jaw in a bloody splatter. But that didn’t stop it.

We both went down as the jumper collided with me. The thing tried to knaw on my shoulder with it’s destroyed mouth as I kept it away with the shotgun pressed against it’s bloody throat. I rolled so that I was on top and replaced the shotgun with my hand trying to hold the thing down as it thrashed against me.

With my free hand I drew my pistol but then the jumper’s legs kicked up and threw me across the room against the wall into a pile of chairs upside down. I tried to shake off the pain of the impact and heard more gunshots near at hand and a scream. I opened my eyes to see Betty pinned to the ground with the jumper beating her helmet around.

It was awkward but I managed to get a sight picture on the jumper’s head with my pistol and squeezed the trigger twice, the first round hitting the wall and the second finding it’s mark.